


all my nights taste like gold (and when im with you it's like everything glows)

by wtfoctagon



Series: Code Vein continuity where everyone's at least a little bit gay [2]
Category: Code Vein (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Temporary Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Dweller in the Dark | Good Ending (Code Vein), F/F, Female Protagonist (Code Vein) - Freeform, Past unrequited love, and having actual interpersonal dynamics outside of the protagonist, what's better than this? just underdeveloped characters being friends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:28:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 33,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28768590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wtfoctagon/pseuds/wtfoctagon
Summary: Part of her knows this is wrong. To indulge the fantasy, to use her imaginary incarnation of Io to pretend that she’s here— that she’s here and holding her like this. It’s wrong and unhealthy but it’s hard to let go of, too. And anyway— it’s only fair, isn’t it? She didn’t even get to say goodbye.“You’re upset.” Io runs her thumb over Mia’s cheekbone. “What’s wrong?”Mia scoffs. “You have to ask? I miss you.”//A year after the world was saved, Mia starts having strange dreams inbetween her deaths and regenerations. And yeah, she knew she hadn't gotten over the whole "falling in love with a girl who was clearly soulmates with someone else" schtick, but isn't this a bit much?
Relationships: Assumed Past Female Protagonist/Io, Background Emily Su/Yakumo Shinonome, Background Karen/Aurora Valentino, Io/Mia Karnstein, Mia Karnstein & Nicola Karnstein, Mia Karnstein & Protagonist, Mia Karnstein & Rin Murasame
Series: Code Vein continuity where everyone's at least a little bit gay [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2109273
Comments: 9
Kudos: 15





	1. please excuse me, i don't know where to begin

**Author's Note:**

> Fic and chapter title from Waking Up Slow by Gabrielle Aplin.
> 
> AUGH man.... I just wanted to write vampire porn but then I got too Into The Setting so now this is gonna be a longass slowburn with an eventual rating bump. 
> 
> a few things of note:  
> \- this story will assume that the Gaol is located in New York City, based on the faded NYC signs you can see on the ruined taxis in-game  
> \- i am also assuming that Code Vein is set in the same universe as God Eater, and the world had ended in 2050 based on information available from the GE lore  
> \- as such, this story is set in 2065, fifteen years after the collapse: 2 years of Project QUEEN, 3 years of Operation Queenslayer, and 10 years of the Successor program.  
> \- two years of project queen is baaasically canon I think? derived from the fact that Louis and Cruz were classmates, but have a two year gap in their death ages-- seeing as Louis was among the very first group of people killed by the Queen's frenzy, it only makes sense that it lasted two years i.e. Cruz had become a revenant when she and Louis were both 18 and then frenzied and killed Louis when he was 20  
> \- the name of the Queenslayer in this universe is Sifra (named by Louis when she met him as a total amnesiac and decided to keep the name even after learning her original identity) and everyone calls her Sif  
> \- we're assuming that Mia slept for a Whole Ten YEARS since she died, only getting her ass up five years into the post-war decade, making her 23 going on 24  
> \- Sif died during the collapse in 2050 at the age of 24 and only woke up at the tail end of Operation Queenslayer just to eat it AGAIN before going into a ten year coma so the poor girl has been mentally 24-25 ish for fifteen chronological fucking years now rip  
> \- I'm gonna say that Louis and Yakumo are in their mid-late twenties mentally just because I can't decide when Yakumo would have woken up?? and Emily lost way too much of her memories as a successor so cumulatively she's only like 25 ish  
> \- If you think me obsessing over mental ages is weird im sorry im sensitive to this stuff for Personal Reasons lmao  
> \- the only exception to this whole business is Nicola, I guess-- speaking biologically, if you keep a seven year old brain at a seven year old developmental stage for ten years while locking the kid in a cage for all of it, that kid isn't going to become the mental equivalent of a seventeen year old, just like logistically. I guess it makes him one of those Super Traumatized Magical Children who are weirdly too mature in certain aspects of their personality while still being a kid sdlkfjvnsdf  
> \- Please imagine all the girls in their DLC outfits. We're not doing the weird Russian Hat or Completely Falling Apart Rags For Dresses. Also Rin's wearing normal athletic short shorts and not a weird cameltoe harness because fuck canon design <3
> 
> anyway I hope this makes sense enjoy your lesbians lmao

It occurs to Mia that she might not be able to bounce back from this.

She’s not the type to take risks— she’s always had someone waiting for her at home, after all, and risks are for people like Yakumo who can take a whole axe in the gut and still keep fighting. It’s unlike her to be so reckless, especially on precarious footing, when she knows she’s much less likely to come back from awful accidents—

But when she saw Io’s amber tear fly out of Sif’s coat pocket and into the ravine, she jumped after it before she had the chance to think.

It’s not something that should ever be lost like that, to a stray swipe of a sword— it’s not something any of them can afford to lose, not after everything Io’s done for them. Her reaction was desperate, almost reflexive— but it might not matter in the end anyway if she doesn’t make it back so that’s just _perfect._

She’s been falling for too long. This is the longest she’s ever fallen, and at terminal velocity she knows her heart will be horribly ruptured from the impact but who knows if it’s enough to turn her to dust? 

The rocky end finally comes into view and she’s afraid— no, no she still has to take care of Nicola, there’s still so much she wants to see and live, she’s only twenty-three for fuck’s sake this isn’t fai

* * *

_“Is this why you asked Murasame for my measurements?”_

_You look up at Io, shocked. “How did you— ugh, whatever. Yeah.” You go back to wrapping the straps around Io’s ankles. “We found a clothing store that was left mostly intact, but I knew I only had enough endurance for one trip, so…” you swallowed your embarrassment and asked, but you don’t wanna think about that right now. You clasp the buckle. “How’s this? Too tight?”_

_Io rotates her ankle, looking down blankly at her foot, then you. “No. It’s… unfamiliar.”_

_She’s probably never worn shoes before. The thought makes you sad, and kind of angry, but it’s not relevant right now._

_“You’ll get used to it in a bit. Definitely loosen it if it starts hurting, though, okay?” you say, fitting the remaining sandal to Io’s other foot._

_“Understood.” Io says it like— like you’ve given her a command, and you try not to sigh. She doesn’t remember anything, much less why she has to obey Sif. Baby steps. She’ll get there if everyone keeps encouraging her._

_“And… done.” You pat the buckle in place and rise to your feet, reaching out for Io’s hands. “Come on, up you go— tell me how it feels.”_

_She grasps your wrists as she hesitantly stands up from the stool. “It’s… snug.”_

_“But still comfortable?”_

_Io nods. “Yes. I think so.”_

_“Good!” You smile, because the gladiator-style sandals do look really good on her and okay maybe you’re a little proud of yourself. “And the dress?”_

_Io looks down at the dress thoughtfully. You’re pretty proud of that one too. Knee-length circle skirt bottom, lacy halter neckline at the top, a nice gradient of white to navy— it was totally worth digging through the boxes to find one in Io’s size, she looks incredible._

_“It’s… the same. But the item you put on my chest underneath…”_

_Oh god— you do nooooot want to talk about the bra again. You could hardly see well enough to put it on Io, mostly because you were trying to very much not see anything after the moment you asked Io to take her old clothes off. Thank god you had the foresight to ask Coco for help to begin with. You wouldn’t have gotten anywhere if Coco hadn’t rolled her eyes and pushed your shaking hands aside to do it herself, muttering under her breath about teenager hormones even though you’re actually in your early twenties, thank you very much._

_“Is it too tight?” Please say no, Coco went to meet a client a few minutes ago, you don’t think you can handle it._

_Io shakes her head. “I’m not sure what purpose it serves.”_

_“Well… uh.” you keep your eyes very much on Io’s face. “It’s supposed to make moving less uncomfortable.”_

_Io seems to contemplate for a moment before nodding. “I see. Yes, I think I understand.”_

_Phew. You smile, squeezing her wrists and bouncing on your heels once. “So? Do you like it?”_

_She frowns. “Like… it?”_

_“Yeah,” you laugh, knitting your brows. “It’s okay if you don’t— I can go find something more to your taste, if you want.”_

_She shakes her head, still frowning, and you can feel her grip on your wrists tightening somewhat. “These are sufficient. They will allow me to move with more ease and help me fulfill my duty. There is no need for you to put yourself in any further danger.”_

_She looks slightly upset about the thought, which is… touching, if sad. You still smile for her, anyway._

_“I know I don’t need to, but I want to.”_

_Confused, a bit distraught— you don’t like seeing her like this, but you know it’s something she needs to work through._

_“Why?” she asks._

_“Because clothes should be comfy and make you feel good.” You smooth the pads of your thumbs along her skin, trying to sound as soothing as possible. “It might sound kind of trivial, but it goes a long way in keeping someone happy, you know.”_

_She stares, and her eyes are molten gold in the low lamplight of your room. “Happy?”_

_“Yeah. Happy.” You press the word on her, wanting it to sink in. “You deserve to be happy.”_

_She opens and closes her mouth a few times, like she’s searching for what she needs to say, but the truth is that she doesn’t need to say anything. You don’t need her to say anything, it’s more than enough if she just believes you when you say that._

_“I know it doesn’t really matter what I think if you don’t like it,” you start, letting go of her arms and stepping aside so she can see the mirror on the door of your wardrobe. You stand beside her, reaching up to tuck the tag back into the back of the collar. “But I think it looks amazing on you.”_

_Her eyes widen as she looks at herself, then at you through the mirror. A flush rises to her pale cheeks and you remind yourself to compliment her more often because— because she deserves it, but also because this reaction is super cute._

_She folds her hands over her heart, looking down at the floor before she turns to face you properly, looking less confused but maybe still surprised._

_“I… think I understand now,” she whispers, and you can’t help the grin that breaks across your face._

A measured breath— then the scene fades to black before the light returns to her now-empty room. 

Mia blinks. “What… was that?”

“A memory.”

The soft voice has her jumping up from her bed, because it’s— it’s Io. It’s Io, standing in her doorway, wearing a flowing white gown that Mia’s never seen before with a sheer red shawl draped over her shoulders instead of her regular blood veil, and, oh. 

It’s Io.

“I’m dreaming,” she sighs, collapsing back onto the duvet. 

Io walks towards her, footsteps silent against the floor as she comes to take a seat next to Mia. 

“Perhaps.”

Mia braces her palms against the edge of the bed, hunching her shoulders as she leans forward. “Am I dead?”

“In a sense.” Io’s hands are folded in her lap, wreathed in delicate white lace. “But you have been for some time now.”

“Very funny,” she scoffs, rolling her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

She looks over to see Io giving her the hint of a wry smile— her hair is haloed in some blue light that seems to follow her wherever she moves. She looks so… beautiful, ephemeral, but more like a goddess than the ghost that she is. 

Par for the course, Mia supposes. Memories are so _subjective_ , and she’s not surprised her version of Io looks like some imaginary angel.

“Dust cannot dream,” Io finally says, reaching up towards Mia’s face. “And your journey home doesn’t have to be cold and dark.”

She cradles Mia’s cheek, and god— her hand is so warm. Mia closes her eyes, leaning into the warmth, feeling her face crumple as she brings her own hand up to press against the back of Io’s. 

Part of her knows this is wrong. To indulge the fantasy, to use her imaginary incarnation of Io to pretend that she’s here— that she’s here and holding her like this. It’s wrong and unhealthy but it’s hard to let go of, too. And anyway— it’s only fair, isn’t it? She didn’t even get to say goodbye. 

“You’re upset.” Io runs her thumb over Mia’s cheekbone. “What’s wrong?”

Mia scoffs. “You have to ask? I miss you.” 

A pause— silence, just the slow beats of Io’s pulse Mia can feel through the pads of her fingers. 

“I see.” Io reaches over and joins their free hands as well in Mia’s lap, intertwining their fingers. “And the memory?”

Mia opens her eyes, frowning. “What do you mean?”

“It was just after we had restored Nicola’s relic.” Her voice is so gentle, so measured, in all the ways Mia misses. “Why that one?”

Why that one? Does it matter? It’s just one of many that she replays to herself, praying that she never forgets.

“I guess, maybe…” She tries to think. “It was the first time I felt so… invested?” She snorts. “For lack of a better word. I mean, I liked you well enough before that, and I’ve always wanted you to be more yourself, but… that was when I realized how much I wanted to take care of you. It surprised me, to be honest.” 

She murmurs those last few words into Io’s hand, turning her head to press a kiss into her palm. And yeah, maybe it’s the weird dream equivalent of being a creep with a printed body pillow and even worse because she’s dreaming about someone who’s _gone_ but— can’t a girl dream? She’s not the one who gets to have Io’s last memento, so can’t she let herself have this, at least?

Io doesn’t pull away, and Mia’s grateful for that. 

“It surprised me too,” she says. “You were always so kind to me, even when you had no reason to be.”

Mia laughs. “Did I need a reason? You were so… helpless, when we met, of course I wanted to take care of you.” She sighs. “It’s funny that you were the one who had me on my toes, in the end.”

_You sit on the ruined remains of the balcony’s stone fence, polishing your bayonet as you watch Io read a book._

_She’s sitting on one of the patio chairs, totally engrossed— a variety of expressions play across her face as her eyes flutter over the words and you wonder: how does someone look so pretty doing something so mundane? The sunset paints her hair a light shade of warm red, turning her golden eyes a smoldering amber, and her fingers look so delicate turning through the pages._

_She’s been reading a lot lately. Ever since they got back from that… underground hell, she’s had this bright look in her eyes— the entire time you’ve spent waiting while Jack and Louis try to map out where Mido has gone to, she’s been reading anything and everything she could get her hands on. She’s already torn through Yakumo and Rin’s collection of comics as well as Louis’ small pile of novels, and you’re pretty sure you’ve seen her buried in his old medical textbooks, too._

_How she managed to get through them all is a wonder, but it’s… kind of nice, maybe? You’re not sure how to describe the way you feel when you see her so… hungry for knowledge, so curious about the world and everything in it. It’s definitely a positive kind of emotion, because before she was so uninterested in anything that didn’t have to do with Sif or keeping Sif safe. Now she’s flipping through one of Rin’s maintenance manuals because she wants to know as much as possible, for herself and herself only. It’s… marvellous to see, really._

_But also, jeez. She’s a_ **_really_ ** _fast reader._

_“Take a picture,” she says mildly, “it’ll last longer.”_

**_What._ **

_Your bayonet clatters to the floor as you fumble it like a drunk clown, followed by your own sorry ass losing your balance trying to chase after it— you’ve definitely skinned something on the rough stone but that doesn’t really matter right now because what the hell was that??_

_“Oh, I—” Io grabs the bayonet that’s skidded all the way to her feet and quickly comes to kneel in front of you, looking as surprised as you. “I’m sorry, I was just teasing you…”_

_“You were—” she was what?? “I— where did you even—?”_

_“I saw it a few times in one of Louis’ novels, so I asked him what it meant.” She looks so worried, offering the gun towards you so gingerly as if you might break if she gets too close. And, to be fair, you feel like you actually might. “I’m sorry I startled you. I wasn’t actually angry with you, I promise.”_

_Oh. Oh, right— of course, of course Louis gave her the old timey definition, when it was a genuine request for privacy like forty or so years ago. She has no idea it was considered a flirty thing to say just before human civilization went to shit, haha, of course, she wasn’t making a pass at you why in the world would she do that?_

_She’s looking at you with this kind of weird expression and yeah, okay, you wouldn’t blame her if she thought you were being ridiculous right now but—_

_“Pfft.”_

_She brings a delicate hand up in front of her mouth, turning her face away as if she’s hiding and—_

_“Are—” you blubber as your face catches on fire. “Are you laughing at me?”_

_“I’m—” another poorly contained laugh— “I’m sorry, you just look so—”_

_Stupid? Ridiculous? Like you’ve just experienced the emotional equivalent of getting shot in the face? Check, check, and check— but you can’t even be indignant because Io dissolves into quiet giggles and it’s…_

_Oh, wow. It’s the first time you’ve heard her laugh._

The curtain closes on the warm memory, and then it’s just Io and Mia again. 

“You had such a pretty laugh,” Mia says. “I think about it a lot.”

“I…” Io looks… surprised, maybe a little confused. “I never realized how much it meant to you.”

Mia lets go of her hands, letting them fall back onto her soft dress. “Why would you? It’s not like I ever told you.”

“Why didn’t you?” 

That soft, worried tone of voice— it’s exactly how she sounded in real life and Mia’s almost mad at her own memory for being so detail-oriented. She scoffs. “There was no point. The only person you ever needed was Sif.” She leans back on her hands, sighing. “Sometimes it’s better to keep inconvenient truths to yourself.”

Io shakes her head. “You shouldn’t have had to hurt alone.”

Mia just smiles. “Better that than watching you feel guilty while you chose Sif anyway.” She lets her head hang back, puffing out a wry breath at the ceiling before sitting up straight. “It’s not like I ever stood a chance.” 

The sun rises through her window, and she’s suddenly aware of her own heartbeat— right. That’s her cue.

“Time for me to go, I think,” she says, gently patting the back of Io’s hand. “Thank you. For keeping me company.”

And Io looks pained, like she doesn’t want to go as much as Mia doesn’t want her to— she catches Mia’s hand before she can pull away, and Mia imagines she can feel her shaking. 

“Please,” Io whispers. “Take care of yourself.”

Mia smiles. “I will.” 

It’s a bit of a lie, but she’s only talking to the personified illusion of being loved by someone who’s long gone— it hardly matters, does it?

* * *

And as always, the world comes back in a slow sweep of bright golden lights.

Her feet land on solid ground, and the first thing she feels is a pair arms cinched around her— almost too tight for comfort— and it’s only by the necklace dangling by her face that she recognizes it’s _Sif_ who’s wrapped around her like a six foot tall fortress. 

“Easy,” she hisses, patting Sif’s back. “You’re gonna pop my lungs if you squeeze any harder and then I’ll have to start over again.”

Sif jerks back at that, though she’s still gripping Mia’s shoulders with unnecessary force as she glares down at her.

“Don’t.” Her voice is low and gravelly, the way it only really gets while she’s fighting— “Don’t you _dare_ joke about that.”

And maybe it’s not the healthiest thing that absolutely _nothing_ ticks Mia off more than being told not to do something in a commanding tone, but Sif still _knows_ that she hates it and that pisses her off even more.

“I can joke about my own dispersal if I want to, thank you very much,” she says, crossing her arms. 

That makes Sif angrier, but seriously? That’s fine by Mia— if it’s going to be an argument, she’s ready to argue. 

“It’s _not_ funny.” 

“That sounds like a _you_ problem,” Mia snaps. “And I’d appreciate it if you let go of me, unless you’re planning on turning this into a fight.”

That gets Sif to stop crushing her shoulders and step back, at least, but she still had no business treating Mia like that to being with— and barely a second after she materialized, no less—

“Okay, break it up, you two,” Yakumo says, taking a half step between them, and Mia’s going to break _him_ in two if he so much as touches her. “Sif, come on. You know it’s not fair to get mad at her.”

‘Not fair’ is a bit of an understatement, and Mia’s about to say so when Sif whirls around and stomps off towards the bedrooms. _Marvellous_ reaction to criticism, bravo. 

Yakumo sighs as he watches Louis trudge after Sif before he turns to Mia. “Give her a minute. She was really worried about you.”

“Well, she can _kindly_ calm down.” Mia angrily tosses her hair back, trying to fix the way Sif mussed it up with the manhandling. “This is hardly the first time she’s seen it happen.”

“Mia—”

Whatever he’s about to say is cut off by the clattering of some orange creature launching out of the weapons vault— Rin kicks over like five different weapons in her mad dash over the workshop counter before coming to a dead stop. 

“It’s you,” she croaks, the sound coming through her mask a bit harshly. 

“It’s… me,” Mia says with a confused and half-hearted kind of mock enthusiasm, looking Rin over. “What happened to your voice?”

Rin actually uses an ichor spell to warp in front of Mia, and the small crunch she hears as she’s constricted in another bear hug is _definitely_ her sunglasses breaking. 

(Great. Now she has to endure Coco’s silent I-told-you-so look because she _did_ warn Mia that the front of her shirt was a bad place to keep them.) 

“Rin, what—” she cuts herself off because there’s no point trying to talk when she can’t even hear herself Rin literally _wailing_ into her coat. Yakumo winces sympathetically when Mia shoots him an alarmed look.

 _What the fuck?_ she mouths at him, awkwardly patting Rin’s back in an attempt to calm her down. He just sighs unhelpfully and shakes his head, as if she’s supposed to know what that means.

“Y-you— you’re—” Rin blubbers, “you’re alive—!”

Well, in a manner of speaking, but, uh, okay, maybe Mia shouldn’t make that joke to Rin’s face. What is going _on?_

“I’m alive,” Mia says cheerfully when the sobbing drops a few decibels. “Can someone please explain why that’s such a big deal?”

The question seems to make Rin even _more_ miserable, so she turns to Yakumo again, starting to feel a little bit out of her mind. He shuffles uncomfortably.

“We, uh—” he stutters, rubbing the back of his neck. “We weren’t sure if you were gonna make it back.”

“Why?” Mia hisses at him while gently rubbing Rin’s back, hoping to calm her down. 

“Well, you see, uhm—”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Coco snarls, and Mia jumps because shit she didn’t see her standing by the bar— “you’ve been gone for a week. Revenants only take a day to regenerate at most. Do the math.”

Coco doesn’t even look at her as she’s talking— she just drains her glass and walks away as well.

A week, huh. Mia swallows down some of the anxiety that’s starting to bubble up. “Well, hey,” she tries, “Sif took ten years to regenerate, right?”

Yakumo sighs at her. “Sif was also a Successor at the time. You’re not unlucky enough to have a piece of the immortal Queen inside you, so we figured…”

“Oh.” Mia thinks about asking if Rin’s voice is messed up because she’s been crying the whole week but decides that it’s kind of a rhetorical question with Rin sniffling directly into her coat. “I… I see.”

Wait.

“Crap,” she hisses. “Where’s Nicola?”

* * *

He’s fine, thank god. He’s been staying with Karen and Aurora at their new place in the ruined theatre on the other side of the same plateau the cathedral sits on. It’s only a short jaunt but Mia still sprints the entire way, just barely stopping herself from slamming against the double doors.

She prepares herself to politely ‘mhm’ and ‘uh-huh, of course’ her way through Karen and Aurora’s surprise and well-wishes, because the thought of having put Nicola through a week of thinking she was dead— through what _she_ went through, back then, is unbearable. 

But the one who answers the door is none other than Nicola himself.

She bends down to catch him at the same time that he throws himself at her— and oh, maybe it’s only been a few hours for her but it’s a relief to hear his bright laughter as she picks him up and spins him around. 

(Just like he once did for her, back when he was a frosted suit of armor who’d spent too many years alone, and she had only been grateful to know that he wasn’t a pile of ash sitting miles beneath the ground.)

He’s ok, and so is she, and all's right with the world again. 

“I _knew_ you weren’t really gone,” he says into the collar of her coat. 

“Of course I wasn’t,” Mia laughs as she presses her hand to the back of his head, holding him tight once more before she crouches on one knee to set him down. “I couldn’t just leave you all alone, could I?”

He smiles, then hops excitedly. “Did you get it?”

“Did I get… what?” She frowns.

“The amber blood bead,” Nicola complains, “that’s what you were trying to save, right?”

Oh, _right—_ she hurriedly reaches into the inner pocket of her coat, sighing with relief when her hand closes around something smooth and round. 

“Thank god,” she says, pulling it out of the pocket. “For a second I was scared it didn’t come with me after all that.”

It glitters in the sunlight with little petals fluttering here and there inside the golden glass, and it reminds her of the way Io’s eyes would shimmer in the light of the sunset. The thought sticks in her throat— she’s almost grateful when Nicola takes it with both hands, cradling it gently in his palms. 

“I can’t believe you forgot to check,” he snorts. “This was the whole reason you were gone in the first place.”

“Come on, gimme a break,” Mia laughs weakly. “I had to run through a gauntlet of people who thought I was dead.”

Nicola huffs. “I _told_ them you weren’t really gone, but they didn’t believe me.”

“Well, not everyone is as smart as you, are they?” she pinches his cheek lightly, grinning when he giggles as he shies away. “You’ll have to go easy on them.”

He beams at her, cradling the amber bead to his chest before he closes his eyes and tucks his face down as well. 

“Thank you,” he says quietly. “For keeping Mia safe.”

Mia snorts. “Hey now. I did all the hard work of regenerating, you know. All that thing had to do was sit in my pocket.”

He rolls his eyes dramatically, huffing again. “I wasn’t talking to the bead, I was talking to Io.”

The name is like a punch to the chest, and Mia’s mouth feels dry all of a sudden.

“Io?” she asks as she starts to feel the rough pavement digging into her knee. Nicola just nods, as if he’s said the most obvious thing in the world.

“Yeah. This is her heart, you know,” he says as he hands the bead back to her. “I knew she wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”

How he talks so confidently about someone he’s technically never met before, Mia doesn’t know. She just takes the tear-shaped jewel with one hand, trying to think of something to say.

Nicola sighs. “Not you too.”

“I—” she blinks up at him. “What?”

“You’re doing that thing,” he mutters. “When adults think I’m making things up to feel better so they just smile at me out of pity.” 

Ah. Guilty as charged. She grimaces and reminds herself for the umpteenth time that Nicola may look like he’s still only seven years old, but by all rights he’s lived through more than she has at this point. Maybe the ten years in the crypt didn’t mean much in life experience, but even the version of him that travelled with her would have been at least twelve by the time they met Louis and the others. 

“S-sorry,” she says, tucking the bead back into her pocket. “I didn’t mean to. I just…” 

It’s just hard, getting over her knee-jerk impulse to protect him instead of being honest with him, but she tries. He deserves that much. 

“It hurts to talk about her sometimes,” she confesses. “I miss her a lot.”

She feels him wrap his small arms around her shoulders, gently this time. 

“Okay. I’m sorry.” And he sounds older than she’s ready to cope with. “We don’t have to talk about it.” Patting her head, he pulls away to grab her hand. “Come on. You should say hi to Karen and Aurora.”

It’s funny— she understands the cliche now, she thinks. They _do_ grow up so fast. She laughs, squeezing his hand as she pushes herself back on her feet.

“Yeah. Let’s go.” She holds the door open for him as they pass through. “Wanna catch me up on what I missed on the way?”

"Well, you remember that kitten Yakumo found? Louis and Karen are still fighting over who gets to keep it and..."

* * *

It’s weird to have people get so _emotional_ about seeing her when for her, it was only a short nap. And Mia won’t lie, but it’s… kind of nice, too. Being appreciated. She never really understood how much people would miss her until now.

Like… she wasn’t kidding about the gauntlet. Karen and Aurora were much more relieved than Mia expected them to be (though Mia could see the cogs turning in their heads trying to figure out the questions they were going to ask her later about the entire process). By the time she got back to the cathedral, Emily was there to crush her into _another_ hug, though she didn't barnacle onto Mia afterwards like Rin did. Louis, obviously, was his sentimental self, hiding behind his too-long bangs and telling her how relieved he was with his Soft Boy voice.

Heck, even Jack and Eva were happy— obviously Eva more so than Jack, although he _did_ do that tough guy thing where he turns around to hide that he’s feeling anything at all. Eva folded her into a sweet hug— because everything about her is sweet— and told her how _glad_ she was that Mia made it home. 

(they’re super cute now, but the way, wearing matching suits— they’re still going around major mistle trees to monitor the condition of the Weeping Tree, but they call themselves the Keepers now instead of watchers.) 

And Coco… well, Mia thought that Coco might have been mad, but she knows better by now. Unlikely as it sounds, they’ve gotten pretty close over the past while— Mia’s always liked her ever since she saw how _nice_ she is to Nicola, even though it made her a little sad because it definitely had something to do with her son. 

“Keep that up and I’m revoking your discount,” was all she had to say when Mia found her later— “I only invest in customers who have a good chance of coming back on a regular basis.”

And then she handed Mia a new pair of sunglasses _without_ the I-told-you-so look, and, well, that’s more than enough, isn’t it? It’s nice to see that she does really care— even if she _did_ scoff and swat Mia in the head with her ledger when Mia tried to thank her. 

So, finally, with the whole parade put behind her, she makes her way towards the one person who might have been the most upset about this whole debacle. 

_Knock knock._ “Delivery for one Sifra Queenslayer?”

And yeah, she knows Sif’s real name now, but she hardly responds to it, so…

(To be honest, her original name really doesn’t suit her anyway.)

There’s the small whooshing sound of ichor being used, and the door opens just a crack. Well, that’s an invitation, right? Mia gingerly pushes through the doorway, making sure to close the door behind herself as quietly as possible. Sif is sitting on the edge of her bed like some brooding statue, on-brand as always— and to be fair, if Mia was as stupidly tall dark and handsome as her, she’d act like a gothic protagonist too. 

“Hey there,” she starts, taking a few steps forward with the amber bead held behind her back like a surprise gift. “Is this a bad time?”

Sif sighs, then finally looks up at Mia, and, ah. She’s been crying. “No. It’s not. I...” she runs a hand over her face. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.”

“It’s okay,” Mia says, standing in front of Sif. “You were worried about me. And I was being kinda pissy, to be honest.” 

Sif frowns. “You were well within your right to be. You didn’t know.”

“I guess, but like…” Mia shrugs. “We don’t really have to argue over the details if you’re sorry and I’m sorry, and there’s no hard feelings, right? Besides,” she says, smiling. “I have something for you.” 

She finally presents the bead to Sif. “Ta-da. Safe and sound.”

Sif stares— and she almost looks like she’s holding her breath as she slowly, reverently takes the bead into her hands. 

(It’s finally back home where it belongs. All's right with the world.)

“This,” Sif breathes. “I almost lost you over _this.”_

And it irks Mia that she’s talking about it like it’s some meaningless trinket— but she takes a deep breath and tries to understand how hard the past week must have been. Knowing Sif, she must have been wracked with grief, feeling responsible for what happened because it was _her_ memento that Mia jumped after— she always did feel responsible for everything that could possibly go wrong. 

(With the world having been balanced on her shoulders for a while, who could blame her?)

“Cut me some slack,” she snorts, trying to lighten the mood. “I didn’t realize it would be that bad of a fall, you know.”

Sif shakes her head. “If anyone was going to risk their life to try and save it, it should have been me.”

“Maybe. But…” Mia looks down at her feet. “You didn’t. You made your choice to keep fighting so that Yakumo and Louis weren’t left to fend off a horde of the Lost on their own. And I knew you guys would be fine without me for a bit—”

“Don’t.” It’s less a command this time than a plea. “Please don’t talk like you’re expendable.”

“I’m _not.”_ Mia sighs. “I’m just saying. I knew what everyone’s chances were. You made your choice, and so did I.” She shakes her head. “It’s nothing to feel guilty over.”

There’s a beat of silence where it almost looks like Sif is going to try and argue for her own guilt again— but then she puts aside the amber bead to leave it nestled on her pillow before reaching for Mia’s waist. A gentle tug, that sad puppy look as if asking for permission; Mia rolls her eyes and steps forward, letting Sif bury her face in the top of her shirt while wrapping her in a hug.

“You’re such a sap,” she teases, running her fingers through Sif’s short, scruffly hair. “What am I going to do with you?”

Sif sighs into her shirt. “Anything you want. Just please don’t scare me like that again.”

“No promises,” Mia snorts, closing her arms around Sif to lean in and nuzzle the top of her head. “But I’ll try my best.”


	2. but i didn't think i cared, i could be your friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This time, it's a gunshot in the gut and meandering dreams about the music she loved to play.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was gonna post this next week but your comments are so sweet actually hello??? im going to cry thank you for enjoying my stupid vampire kids

Mia manages it for a whole week. 

She does a pretty damn good job of it, actually, pulling the cleanest patrols she’s ever managed and getting home without so much as a single scrape. Sure, maybe she was overcompensating a little just to get Louis and Sif off her back, but could anyone really blame her? It was nice to feel appreciated but their fussing got old after two days. 

Thankfully everyone’s pretty much gotten over it by the time they head out to Area O-11 to help Emily with an assignment.

“Sorry for dragging you guys out here,” she says as she crouches in the corner of the ruined building, wiping the sweat from her brow. “I really appreciate it.”

“Don’t worry about it. What are friends for, right?” 

Mia tries not to roll her eyes as Yakumo gives Emily a total Bro Pat on the shoulder. Is he ever going to realize? Is Emily ever going to find someone who won’t waste her time by being totally oblivious?

Mia grimaces and flips her sunglasses down onto her face when another sandy breeze snakes its way into their little makeshift shelter. This is an important mission for Emily, and she’s happy to do it, and she _doesn’t_ want to make her feel guilty so she clamps down on her sigh, but, man. She dusts grains of sand off her gun for the millionth time before they can get into any of the chambers and feels a little like a wet and lukewarm towel. 

(Poor Brodiaea’s just barely recovered from the last time they went traipsing through here to find Eva. Rin’s going to be so pissed.)

“Nothing to apologize for,” Sif says, level-headed on a mission as always. “Once the sun sets, we can move out again to comb the last part of this sector before heading home for the day. Hopefully we’ll find something.”

Emily fans herself with her beret as she sighs. “Thanks, everyone. Man, it’s hot…”

And maybe Mia’s a little mad because, really? The government couldn’t give Emily her own squadron, or even just an additional team member for such an important job? Sure, she can understand that clearing Lost out of key supply routes and defending settlements is a higher priority right now, but it’s not like survey assignments are anything to sneeze at, either. Figuring out which part of the city these ruins used to be is the first step in deciding if it’s worthwhile to send in a scouting team to recover potential supplies or important documents. Cerberus must be stretched out thinner than Mia had thought if some provisions and a set of fancy gear is the best they can do for Emily.

She snorts. God. She sounds like her dad. His political soliloquies at the dinner table have rubbed off on her more than she realized.

“I wonder how many degrees celsius it is right now,” Louis mutters from where he’s leaning against an intact piece of wall. “Revenants have a much higher heat tolerance than humans, and if we’re still feeling it while resting in the shade…”

Nerd. It’s probably hot enough to induce death by heatstroke in a human in under five minutes, but Mia doesn’t really want to think about the specifics. She’s just grateful her bayonet isn’t burning the skin right off her hands.

“Probably enough to fry an egg on our skin,” Yakumo groans, stretching out his shoulders. “Actually, man. I haven’t had eggs in forever. I’d kill for a good scramble right now.”

“Oh, stop,” Emily grumbles, burying her face in her knees. “You’re making me hungry.”

Louis reaches for his pack, rummaging around… whatever the heck he keeps in there. “Hold on, I still have some blood beads left over from last week’s rations.”

“No, not like that,” Yakumo laughs. “Hunger is an emotion for us now, you know that. Like nostalgia. Don’t you get hungry for stuff you grew up on sometimes?”

Louis gives his usual fish-eyed look that he gets when he’s taken aback or thinking way too seriously about something. “W-well. Sometimes my father would bring home candies from the hospital when I was young. I suppose I miss those from time to time.”

“Ugh,” Emily wails miserably. “What I wouldn’t do for a pack of skittles right now…!”

They banter on while Mia continues to clean out the sides of her gun. Sif shuffles closer, taking a seat on the half-collapsed windowsill to bring herself closer to Mia’s eye-level. 

“You’re awfully quiet.”

Mia smirks. “Any reason I shouldn’t be?”

“No, but I feel like you probably would have called Louis a nerd at least once by now.”

“You make me sound like such a bully,” she says, elbowing Sif before shaking her handkerchief out to start on the other side of the bayonet handle. 

Sif just shrugs again. “Well, if the shoe fits…”

 _“Hey,”_ Mia huffs, lightly jabbing Sif in the ribs with the butt of her gun. “You’re mean.”

And it’s rare to see Sif looking so… soft, like this, outside of the cathedral. She’s usually all business once she’s got her blood veil on, hardly even cracking a smile for any of Yakumo’s jokes— but right now, her eyes are crinkling warmly and Mia can perfectly picture the way her dimples would be pushing in underneath her purifier. 

(She’s so insufferably handsome, sometimes— her bangs are too long like Louis’ are, but hers are less ‘lost puppy’ and more ‘mysterious prince,’ with long lashes fluttering over dark eyes.)

“There,” Sif says, and it’s got that soft huskiness to it that Mia has a love-hate relationship with. “That’s better.”

“What is?” she snorts with a bit of incredulous sarcasm, polishing the underside of Brodiaea’s barrel. 

“I got you to smile.”

And just how disgustingly sweet is that? 

“You can’t even see it,” she retorts.

“But I like knowing it’s there.”

“Oh my god,” she sets her bayonet across her lap to give Sif a half-heartedly warning look. “Stop it. I’m going to punch you.”

Sif just shrugs again, eyes still crinkled in a smile. “Okay.”

And Mia just honestly has nothing to say in response. Sif just fits so many ‘romantic vampire’ tropes it actually makes her kind of mad. Tall, dark, dreamy, but still so terribly sweet and kind— she’s the kind of dream girl you’d read about in one of those old lesbian pulp novels. 

(It’s no wonder Io fell in love with her. Mia did too, just a tiny bit, and somehow it made the whole thing so much worse.)

“I never did tell you I wanted to be a chef, did I?”

Thankfully, the ongoing conversation between the other three fills the unbearably tender silence and Mia tunes into that instead. 

“You didn’t, but it suits you,” Louis agrees. “Did you ever consider going to culinary school?”

“Pfft— with Mido breathing down my neck? No way,” Yakumo laughs. “Nah. I worked as many odd jobs as I could to save up and move out. The plan was to get any job I could at a restaurant and try to work my way up. Then, once I opened my own place, I’d have world-class athlete Emily Su as a regular and I’d be set for life.”

The way he grins at Emily is stupidly affectionate and charming and _clueless._ Mia almost wants to kick him in the head— the girl hasn’t even really been subtle about any of this, at all, what _is it_ that’s not clicking with him? 

She gives Emily a sympathetic look as subtly as she can, getting an appreciative smile in return. 

“What about you, Mia?” she asks, and Mia puts away her handkerchief to answer her call for a change of topic. “You said you were a pianist, right?”

Ah. She forgot she’d told Emily a bit about that some time ago. She tries not to feel nervous with all eyes on her, suddenly, curious and expectant. 

“Oh… yeah. My mom was the dean of a classical music academy, so I was kind of expected to be.” 

“Really?” Louis raises his brows. “That’s impressive. Do you still play?”

“In _this_ post-apocalypse?” Mia scoffs. “I rarely get the chance to.”

“You say that like we don’t have a perfectly good piano back at base,” Yakumo chimes in. “Murasame keeps it nice and tuned and everything. How come you never play for us?”

She shrugs. “You never asked.”

“But you would?” Sif adds. “If we asked?”

And Mia’s not sure why Sif’s looking at her so intently like this— like she’s discovered something new that she’d very much like to learn more about. There’s no way Io hadn’t already told her about it. 

“I don’t take requests, if that’s what you’re asking,” she laughs, trying to shake it off. “Besides, I hardly remember anything anyw—”

She doesn’t finish her lie because the sun glints off a badly corroded bayonet in the distance that’s being pointed directly at Emily’s heart with the slow malice that permeates every Lost she’s ever seen. Her feet hit the cracked concrete, her left hand pushes Emily to the ground, and Brodiaea spits a sharp spike of ichor at the Lost all in the span of a blink. 

_“Mia!”_

Sif’s scream is cracked and hoarse. Mia opens her mouth to tell Sif to relax but all she tastes is blood filling up her mask. 

Oh. Ow. That feels like a punctured lung. Mia hopes it's not a punctured lung, because drowning in your own blood takes _forever_ and hurts like hell— but there’s an annoying, high-pitched whistle when she tries to breathe and she’s not actually getting any air, so it’s probably a punctured lung.

Ah, well. At least she got a bullseye. The coin-sized hole in the Lost’s head is clean and perfectly executed— the poor bastard disintegrates like _that,_ no lingering or anything. Marvellously done, if she does say so herself. 

The world spins once before she stumbles back into something solid and strong— Sif’s wide, horrified eyes come into view and oh, dammit. 

* * *

_A soft note rings through the cathedral, and you look up to see that Io’s woken up from her nap and has taken a seat at the piano._

(Weird. There’s usually at least a minute of gurgling and begging to be put out of her misery before she gets to make her way home.)

_“It’s strange, isn’t it?” Io asks softly as she presses on the centre D sharp. “The noise an instrument makes is simply… physics. Waves of energy travelling through the air as sound, their wavelength shaped by the composition of molecules in the strings used to produce them. It is no different than the noise made by any other object in the world— the breaking of glass, or the firing of a gun.”_

_Wow, she finished Louis’ new stack of science textbooks already?_

_You close your journal and set it aside on the coffee table, standing up to walk towards her._

_“And yet,” Io continues, “when used in a certain manner, instruments alone make what people call… music. And this music, it… inspires emotions that other sounds cannot.” She looks up at you as you come to a stop next to her, placing a hand on the top of the piano. “Why is that?”_

_“No one really knows,” you say. “Well, there are probably a lot of things a scientist could tell you about the way our brains respond to music, but, they couldn’t tell you why exactly.”_

_“How odd.” Io turns her eyes back towards the keys, running her fingers over the octaves. “Instruments are… strange and wonderful things, aren’t they?”_

_You smile. She has such a lovely way of phrasing things, all the time. “You know, anything can be an instrument if you try hard enough. I’m pretty sure people have made music from breaking glass or firing guns.”_

_Wide, bright golden eyes stare at you in astonishment. “How?”_

_“With a lot of time and effort,” you laugh. “Do you mind if I sit with you?”_

_“Please do.” she shuffles a bit to the side, letting you have one half of the bench. “Do you know how to play?”_

_You nod. “A bit. Would you like me to?”_

_“Yes, I… I would very much like that,” she says, so earnestly in her usually reserved and mellow voice— you can almost hear the gears turning in her head as she eagerly drinks in every bit of this new moment and you wonder how it feels from her point of view._

_It’s been years, but muscle memory is such a powerful thing. Your fingers press into the opening notes of one of your favourite songs— one of the few classical pieces that haven’t been drilled into you to the point of hatred— as your foot pedals through the bars on instinct._

_You know you only like this song still because you never let your mother hear you play it— she would have told you how wrong you were, made you play the notes time after time until you couldn’t play it any other way than how she wanted you to, how you were supposed to. Know the rules before breaking them, she would say, and you knew she was right but it was just so hard to keep caring about the same songs enough to do anything new with them. Maybe you just weren’t meant to be a pianist._

_And maybe, you could have been, if you weren’t so terrified of disappointing your mother. If you didn’t know what it felt like to cry alone in the practice room playing the same bar over and over again until you could get it right because she looked so unhappy when you messed it up earlier. She didn’t say anything, but you could tell. You could always tell._

_But this song— this one is yours. And you don’t care if you’re not doing it right._

_Io folds her hand over her heart when you finish, staring wordlessly as the last note rings through the chapel. You can barely see her face through her veil of white hair._

_“That song,” she finally says, so so quietly. “What is it called?”_

_“La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin,” you say, trying your best at the pronunciation. You’ve always been terrible at the so-called Romance languages. “It translates to ‘the girl with the flaxen hair’ in English. You might have heard it before,” you laugh wryly, tapping your finger on a key without pressing down. “It’s supposed to sound… a bit happier than how I play it.”_

_“I… see.” She’s still not looking at you, and you’re starting to get a bit nervous._

_“H-hey.” You pull your hands off the keys and lay them in your lap. “Are you okay?”_

_Her hands are actually shaking as she mirrors you, but with her palms up— she traces a thumb over the heart line of her other hand. “I… I’m not sure. When you were playing, my chest felt tight, and I… felt something very unfamiliar.” She looks up at you, finally, and her eyes are like little golden suns. “Will you play for me again?”_

_She’s just so terribly earnest, awfully sincere— you find yourself nodding because you’ve really thought it through, because how could you say no?_

_“Yeah,” you say, “of course. Any time you want.”_

_And oh, her smile is blinding._

They’re sitting on one of the couches, this time, the one facing the piano and the open section of the cathedral— Mia sighs as she sags back in her seat, throwing an arm over her eyes. 

“I think Sif snapped my neck to help me disperse faster,” she says. “That’s kind of funny, actually.”

“It’s not.”

No, Io wouldn’t find it very amusing, would she? She might be a figment of Mia’s imagination but there isn’t a version of her in the world that would readily indulge in such black humor at the expense of a friend. 

Mia sits up straight, turning to look at her. She’s as beautiful as ever— wearing that floor-length dress, as regal as a queen as she stares straight ahead at the piano.

“I’m sorry. Bad coping mechanism. I’m working on it.”

To be fair, she’s only ever this morbid right after a death experience— but it scares the people who care about her, and maybe that’s reason enough to try and do it less.

Io shakes her head, but doesn’t turn to look at Mia.

“Why?”

Mia shrugs. “I’m not sure. I guess it makes dying less scary—”

“Not that.” Her tone is so firm, so stern, with her hands folded gracefully in her lap. “Music holds so much pain for you, but you still played for me. For hours at a time, some nights. Why?”

Oh. She turns to stare at the piano too, picking at the frayed edges of the couch’s leather. 

“You asked me to.”

“... and that was enough?” 

“For me, yeah,” she says, draping one elbow over the back of the couch, tucking her chin to look at her hands as she fidgets them against each other. “That’s kind of how it works when you have feelings for someone.”

When she glances up, Io’s closed her eyes, though she’s sitting perfectly still. She looks— upset, maybe, and Mia wonders what kind of self-flattery it is to have Io react this way. 

“If I had known,” she murmurs, so softly that Mia almost doesn’t hear. “I would never have asked.”

Mia shakes her head. “It wasn’t that big of a deal. You make it sound like I was suffering.”

“Weren’t you?”

And Io turns the full force of her gaze upon Mia as she says that— her expression is so elegantly impassive, but there’s the slightest downturn to the corner of her mouth that’s just so… sad.

“You hide your pain so well,” she accuses. “Even from yourself.”

Ouch. What a callout. Mia sighs, sliding her elbow down before she flops her head onto the back of the couch instead, staring up at the ceiling while she absently wrings her hands in her lap.

“You’re right,” she says. “But this wasn’t like that. And I’m not just lying to myself.”

There’s a long silence while she counts the cracks in the old stone, traces the shattered edges of the stained glass. 

“My mom never actually planned for me to be a pianist when I was little,” she confesses. “She didn’t want her life to decide where mine would go.” For all the good it did, in the end— the road to parental trauma is paved with loving intentions, Mia supposes. “I actually learned from my grandmother.”

_The world is so bright and kind— because you are sitting in your Nana’s lap as she plays a tune like sunshine, fingers dancing over the keys, kissing the top of your head in between verses as she sings to you that everything will turn out fine._

_And you sing along to the words from her favourite story, sung by her most beloved character-- the one she named you after— and you can’t help but aspire to be all that she loves, this girl that has confidence that the world can all be hers. Because, she tells you, this joyful melody is her wish for you to have confidence in yourself. To have confidence in sunshine, to have confidence in rain, to have confidence that spring will come again— despite how scary every winter night can be._

Isn’t that just so convenient and expository? Mia snorts and closes her eyes as a static-y version of the hundred year old showtune plays from the worn down jukebox. Well, it saves her from having to describe it herself. 

“You were so… happy.”

“Yeah,” she admits. “My grandmother… basically raised me herself because my parents were so busy all the time. She was the only reason I had a normal childhood for the first ten years of my life,” she laughs. “She had this… massive collection of musicals at her house— she put them on for me when she needed to put me down to cook dinner or something. Eventually I was singing showtunes all the time, and she started playing them for me on her old Yamaha.”

She stops fidgeting with her hands and lets them rest on her stomach as she slouches farther into the couch. God, she hasn’t thought about that in a long time.

“She sounds wonderful.”

“She was.” And Mia has to swallow the thick cotton in her throat before she continues. “The first time I learned how to play a song all by myself, she—” Mia laughs. “You’d have thought I taught myself La Campanella or something. She was so proud, she got me dressed up for my sixth birthday to have a ‘recital’ for the entire extended family.” 

The applause, the ‘bravo’s from her aunts and uncles, her wobbling knees as she got up and did what was probably the most clumsy bow they’ve ever seen— she’s surprised the scene itself doesn’t start playing in the cathedral. But then again, she barely remembers it beyond a few scraps and snippets of emotion, so there’s nothing to really show anyhow.

“That was my first taste of performing for a crowd, and I decided I wanted to do it for the rest of my life. I begged my dad to let me take classes at the academy nearby.” She sighs. “Then my grandmother passed away the year before Nicola was born, and in between moving to the East Coast for good and everything I kind of… lost track of why I started in the first place.”

She feels fingertips against the back of her hand and raises it so that Io can thread their fingers together. Io squeezes lightly.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It was a really long time ago. Anyways, I…” she laughs. “Jeez, I didn’t mean to go on such a long tangent. I was just trying to tell you that I didn’t mind playing for you because I was enjoying myself too. For the first time in a while.” She strokes the back of Io’s thumb with her own. “It reminded me that I actually _do_ like playing music.”

Another long pause— Mia keeps her eyes closed, focusing on the feeling of Io’s hand and the garbled song crackling through the jukebox. 

“But you don’t play anymore.”

“No. Not since you…” she grimaces lightly, not really wanting to talk about it. “It just makes me miss you.”

And then Io’s grip sharply tightens, as if it was involuntary— Mia opens her eyes, and Io is simply staring down at their hands, the smallest of creases between her brows. She’s… actually shaking, a little bit. 

“Come on, why so upset?” Mia whispers, “It’s okay. I’m gonna be fine.”

Io only grasps her hand tighter. “I took music away from you again.”

Mia laughs, bringing her other hand around to place it softly atop Io’s. “You make it sound so melodramatic. It’s fine. It’s not like it was that big a part of my life to begin with, you know.” she shakes her head with a wry smile. “I’ll live.”

And then Io’s eyes are searching hers with such uncertainty— Mia holds still, leaves herself open for Io to find whatever it is she’s looking for.

“I’m sorry.”

Mia scoffs gently. “Whatever for?”

“Everything. I’ve hurt you so much,” she murmurs. “I never realized.”

“You _never_ hurt me. Absolutely none of this is your fault. I brought this on myself like an idiot, you know that.”

But Io shakes her head, looking _more_ hurt, somehow. “Don’t say that.”

Mia reaches up to gently brush some silvery hair out of her face, still smiling. “It’s true. I knew it would end badly for me,” she says. “But I went and fell for you anyhow.”

* * *

Getting rushed to the doctors as soon as she regenerates is kind of annoying, but Mia puts up with it when Emily gives her those heartbroken puppy eyes. 

(God. You’d think that she _actually_ died or something. Shouldn’t this stuff be routine for them by now?)

“No abnormalities in your blood pressure,” Karen says absently as she stares at the various charts thrown up on her screens. “And your cell integrity is tip-top as well.”

Mia looks down nervously at the tube in her wrist. “So. The picture of health…?”

“Yes. For now,” Karen mutters, scribbling something down on one of her printed reports before coming over to unhook Mia from… all that. “No changes since your check-up last week, thankfully. Here,” she says as she tears back the velcro band holding some medical thingy to Mia’s forearm before handing her a blood bead. “You know the drill, right?”

Mia nods as she bites off the top of the bead. “Drain it slowly, and don’t get up until I’m done.” 

“Very good,” Karen says cheerfully as she sits at one of her monitors and starts typing. “I took a bit more ichor from you than usual, so let me know if you’re still feeling a little light-headed after finishing.” 

“Mhm.” Mia sucks at the bead just like when she used to savour the rare capri-sun that her caretaker would buy for her and Nicola every now and again, leaning back in the examination chair. Idly tapping the tips of her sneakers together, she looks around at the stage. 

The ruined opera house serves surprisingly well as a laboratory— most of the area surrounding the stage stayed intact, though there is a Thorn running through the grand staircase in the far back, cutting off access to all of the box seats. Which is kind of a shame— Mia never really enjoyed the operas that her mother would drag her to, but she does have a few fond memories of watching pretty women sing onstage from the best seats with Nicola on her lap. 

(The glittering lights, the deep red curtains and the members of the orchestra moving like the gears of an ornate music box, whispering what was happening on stage as loudly to Nicola as she dared before they’d get scolded— it was one of the few times she got to feel like a kid even while she was wrapped up in the glamour of her parents’ world.)

Now, only the floor seats are viable— but that’s more than enough for the few seminars and meetings that she knows Karen and Aurora have hosted. Not a lot of doctors and researchers left inside the Gaol, unfortunately— though the few that survived Mido’s sadism are apparently all too happy to study under the much more humane and sensible Dr. Amamiya and Dr. Valentino.

A permanent podium at the front of the stage, with a rotating cast of machines and testing equipment along the floor itself— Mia might not know the doctors very well, but… it suits them, she thinks. Even if it’s a little on-the-nose for them to be living out of the backstage and basement rooms of the old opera house. 

Then again, Karen’s younger brother set up a shelter in a ruined cathedral, so it’s hardly noteworthy— relatively speaking, anyway. 

“Sorry to be putting you through so many tests,” Karen says with an apologetic smile. “We’re almost done, I promise.”

Mia drains the last of the bead and shakes her head. “Don’t worry about it. It’s for my own good anyway, right?”

Karen laughs wryly. “I don’t mean to scare you, but yes. Your regeneration levels and cellular structure seem normal for now, but there’s no telling if or when the BOR bonds in your body might experience instability.”

She appreciates that Karen doesn’t try to lie or shelter her. Everyone was much more stressed out the last time they did this: something about how the weeklong extension of the dispersal and regeneration process was entirely unprecedented and technically impossible by all laws of physics and biochemistry. They had written it off as an anomaly at the time, but apparently she dissipated before she actually died this time around and two irregular dispersals is two too many. 

Mia tries not to worry too much about the specifics. She wouldn’t understand, and it would just give her the oogies anyway. Good enough that she didn’t die when she might have, and that she’s got two very capable double-phd doctors working on her case now, right?

“How are you feeling? Do you need another bead?”

“Oh—” she places the empty bead into Karen’s expectant hand and shakes her head. “No, I think I’ll be alright.”

“Mhm. You have a naturally high ichor capacity, so I figured it wouldn’t be a problem— but, it’s still better safe than sorry.” Karen tosses the empty bead into a wastebin full of one-use syringes and alcohol swabs and whatnot. “Well. We can’t be sure until some of the test results come back, but it looks like everything’s normal.”

She seems a bit dissatisfied, frowning at her files and flicking her pen sharply. 

“Maybe Sif just panicked and remembered wrong?” She offers. Sif panics a lot more than she lets on, it’s not so hard to believe.

“It wasn’t just Sifra who saw it happen,” Karen reminds her. “All four people on scene mis-remembering the same event is extremely unlikely, but… not _impossible,_ I suppose.” 

She almost looks annoyed by the technicality— Mia’s not too convinced either, but in the face of conclusive evidence, what can you do but settle for the last remaining possibility?

“I’d like you to remain sitting for another five minutes while your body processes the blood, but if you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer.”

It’s the same thing she says every time— procedure, probably, but Karen makes it seem so human. Mia’s about to politely decline and say that she’s alright— like she always does— when she turns her head to meet curious yellow eyes.

“Uh,” she says, as the black cat sniffs her face. “Hello…?”

Mia half expects it to take offense to her speaking and run away, but it just flicks its ears once before climbing off its perch on the arm of the exam chair and right into Mia’s lap. 

“Aw, he likes you,” Karen laughs as she clicks a few numbers into her console. “He’s usually much shyer around other people.” 

Mia experimentally pets the top of the cat’s head. His tail doesn’t flick, and she’s pretty sure she feels him purring quietly, so that’s a good sign. “I’m guessing you won the custody battle?” 

“I had to pull out the big guns, but yes— little Bram is now an official part of the Valentino household.” 

“The big guns?” Mia smiles as she lets Bram stretch and rub his face into the side of her hand. “Did you have to use the Older Sister voice on Louis?”

“Nah.” Karen crinkles her nose. “It doesn’t work on him anymore now that he’s pushing thirty.” And _that’s_ a terrifying thought— given that Louis woke up a few years after Queenslayer, that would mean his little twinky self is actually twenty eight ish, huh? “I told him it was a hate crime to deny the old lesbian couple a chance to become cat moms.”

Mia clamps down on the violent guffaw she’s hit with, trying not to disturb Bram. “That’s so _mean,”_ she gasps, scandalized as she tries not to laugh her ass off. “He would have taken it so seriously!”

“And that’s why I call it the big guns. He folded like a cheap envelope.” Karen smirks smugly, rolling her chair over to give Bram a few scratches under the chin. “We might not get to grow old with fifteen cats like we wanted to, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try.”

It’s strange, hearing someone who looks like a goddamn supermodel lament not being able to age, but Mia doesn’t comment on it. Karen wheels away to continue typing her report into the console, and Mia figures maybe it’s different when you’ve got it all figured out. Good career (for a post-apocalyptic world, anyway), beautiful girlfriend who loves you, etc., etc.

She runs her fingers through Bram’s soft fur as she thinks about it. On the note of aging, actually...

“Hey, I was wondering… how are the trials going? For Nicola, I mean,” she clarifies.

Karen gives her a reassuring smile. “We’ve made a lot of progress— Aurora’s giving him the latest dose right now, and we’re pretty sure it’ll induce a year’s worth of development. Rest assured, though, we’re taking it slow so as to place as little strain on him as possible. On top of that, the time he spent as a Successor has made him extraordinarily resilient, so there’s very little risk involved.”

“It’s— it’s okay, Doctor, I trust you guys. I was just asking because… well.” She crosses her ankles. “If it isn’t too much trouble, it’d be nice to grow a few more inches…”

Karen blinks at her before bursting into laughter— an entirely expected reaction, but Mia still feels a little sheepish anyway. 

“Unfortunately, Miss Karnstein, there are very few documented cases of growth in terms of height after the age of eighteen,” she says with a sympathetic half-grimace, half-smile. “It’s very likely that you’ve reached your full adult height already.”

Mia sighs. “A girl can dream, right?”

“Yes,” Karen laughs. “Yes, she can. Unfortunately, with the number of child revenants who’ve signed up for the serum once it’s finished, you may be waiting for some time after we’re through with the trials.” 

“Oh, of course—” Mia nods. “I know I’m pretty low-priority in that regard, but… Once everyone who needs it has been taken care of, I’d like to have all the privileges of getting into my mid-twenties, you know? Fully developed frontal cortex and all that.”

That gets another full laugh from Karen as she scribbles something into Mia’s file— Mia hopes it’s not some note about ridiculous ambitions, but she couldn’t blame Karen if it is. 

“I can’t imagine you need any help in that regard. You’re an exceptionally level-headed individual, even for your age.”

Receiving an undeserved compliment feels awful, as always— Mia thinks about how _idiotic_ it is to look at two people who were clearly meant for each other and still manage to fall in love with one of them. The fact that the person in question went and gave up her life for her aforementioned soulmate is just the crowning glory to this whole mess.

“Thank you,” she says, idly stroking Bram’s fur. “That’s… very kind of you.”

“But you disagree,” Karen states, firmly but not unkindly. “Is there anything in particular that’s making you so disinclined?

“No,” Mia lies. “I guess I just… feel like I keep making bad decisions even though I know how they’re going to turn out.”

It’s a weak half-truth of an addendum, but it’s all Mia’s got. Karen gives her this… intent, unreadable look that honestly makes her a little bit nervous.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with Sifra and Io, does it?”

Rigor mortis isn’t half as unsettling as how stiff Mia feels.

“I won’t pry,” Karen assures her in a pacifying tone. “It’s none of my business. I just had a feeling. Don’t worry, it’s not obvious— I was only asking because you’ve told me a little about it.”

Mia tries to swallow down the anxiety as she resumes rubbing her fingers just behind Bram’s ears. “Oh.”

“You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to,” Karen continues, leaning forward to give her a terribly sincere look. “But it might help to talk about it with someone who’s not grieving her at the same time as you.”

Well— she would know, having been a wartime doctor, wouldn’t she? Mia nods.

“It doesn’t have to be now, or ever. But consider this an open invitation for whenever you’re feeling up to it, okay? You don’t have to cope with it alone.”

And Mia hates these moments— when someone says something offhandedly and it finally _clicks_ that that’s why she’s so upset about something. Tears prickle at her eyes and it’s just such a stupid overreaction. Yeah, she was dealing with it alone. She didn’t tell anyone, not even Nicola, and that’s probably why she keeps dreaming up an imaginary Io— just to have someone, _anyone_ acknowledge that she’s in pain. 

Stupid. Childish, even. 

She tries not to scowl when her next breath comes as a sniffle. 

“Thank you.” She coughs. “I appreciate it.”

And when she looks up, Karen is giving her such a calming smile— so much so that Mia’s grateful she can look at the doctor and see more of Louis than Io now that she’s gotten used to it. 

(Pictures of Cruz Silva, however, still feel like a shot to the chest. Mia supposes it can’t be helped.)

“Ladies?” Mia looks up to see Aurora poking her head through the backstage curtain before stepping in with a big smile. “I hope I’m not interrupting, but I’ve got great news.”

“It worked?” Karen asks, eagerly turning her chair to face Aurora. 

“Nicola Karnstein is sound asleep,” Aurora announces, “and he has grown a healthy two-point-five centimeters, as projected. A few more doses, and he’ll be as tall as Mia.”

And that very effectively churns Mia’s elation into dread. 

“Oh, no.” Bram ‘mrrp’s up at her inquisitively. “He’s going to be taller than me soon, isn’t he?”

Karen laughs. “I do _not_ envy you. I’ve never gotten over Louis outgrowing me, and we’re only four years apart. You’re what, nine years older than him?”

“Eleven.” Mia stares dead at the floor as Bram complains once before jumping off her lap. “I’m eleven years older than him.”

“Yikes. My condolences.”

* * *

“You’re not really thinking about moving out, right?”

Mia rolls her eyes as she sets the tray down on the table beside Rin. “It’s only for a little bit. The tests say I’m not about to spontaneously disintegrate anytime soon, but they just want to keep an eye on me. Besides,” she scoffs, crossing her arms. “Who’s going to make sure you’re not working yourself to frenzy if I’m gone?”

“Yeah!” Rin nods heartily as she secures a bolt in place on the sword she’s got cinched onto her worktable. “Who’s gonna look after little old me?”

“Speaking of,” Mia scolds, grabbing onto Rin’s wrist to pry the wrench out of her hand. “Your fifteen minutes are up.”

“Aw. Five more…?” 

Mia sets the wrench down in its toolbox before grabbing Rin’s shoulders to jerk her towards the tray. “No. Drink and take your half hour break, or I’m shutting this whole vault down.”

She knows it’s a privilege that she’s allowed in here in the first place— everyone calls it the Murasame Sanctum for a reason. Rin eats and sleeps in here right next to her workbenches, and the far corner is reserved for her special personal projects and prototypes that absolutely no one is even allowed to _look_ at. 

Except for Mia, evidently. It’s a huge show of trust. Mia tries not to get mushy about it too often.

Rin grabs the blood bead and a handful of cookies from the tray before plopping onto her mattress on the floor. 

(Well, not entirely on the floor— she at least propped it up on a set of metal pallets at Mia’s behest, thank god. Poorly ventilated mattresses can get so _moldy._ )

“I know I asked you to be my self control,” Rin says, cramming a cookie in her mouth before washing it down with a gulp from the blood bead. “But you can be _so_ bossy.”

Mia tries not to wrinkle her nose. To each their own, and apparently Rin’s preference is butter cookies dipped in magical not-blood. She drops herself onto the mattress next to Rin, leaning back on her palms.

“The point of being someone’s surrogate self-control is to boss them around,” she scoffs. “Your future self will be grateful.”

“Mmph. Yoor righ’,” she mumbles around a mouthful of cookie. “F’anks.”

And then she plants her head on Mia’s shoulder, humming cheerfully as she tears into her lunch. It’s nothing new, but it was certainly a lot to get used to at first— Mia’s never had a lot of close friends to begin with, and Rin’s enthusiasm was actually a bit intimidating. 

Literally _punting_ a dude twice your size out of the way to go talk to a new friend is coming on a little strong, but Rin’s never really cared much about that stuff— she’s always so… straightforward, so much so that Mia’s jealous sometimes. At first, she chalked it up to mid-teen earnestness, but then she found out that— by all rights, Rin’s actually a whole three years older than her.

Died at sixteen, revived ten years ago to fight in the war. Rin stretches up to grab more cookies without actually standing up fully, nearly knocking over the tray in the process. Looking at her now, it’s… hard to remember how rough of an afterlife she’s had so far. 

“Hey,” Mia starts softly. “Does it ever bother you that you still look like you’re sixteen?”

Rin blinks at her before chewing thoughtfully as she makes a face at the ceiling. “Not as much as I thought it would? Like, sure, it’s made dating impossible for obvious reasons, but I’m not that hung up on it.”

“Yeah?” Mia shifts her weight to one arm. “You don’t wish you could get taller or anything?”

“Nup. I’m a nice and aerodynamic size,” she chirps, and Mia laughs. 

Rin chugs the last of the blood bead before chucking it into her bin. “Why, does it bother you that you’re stuck at eighteen? You pass well enough for a tiny twenty-something instead of a literal kid like me, you know.”

“Yeah,” Mia sighs. “I’m grateful for that, at least. I guess I just…” She collapses back onto the mattress, laying her hands on her stomach as she stares up. “Ugh, nevermind, actually. I’m just fooling myself.” 

Rin follows suit, folding her arms under her head. “Well, come on, tell me at least. What’s on your mind?”

“I…” How should she even start? “I just feel like such a bumbling kid sometimes. I keep hoping that it’s just the fact that my brain isn’t done growing that keeps making me do things I regret, but…”

“But deep down you know that it isn’t actually anything to do with your physiology and just an intrinsic flaw in your personality that causes bad decisions?”

“Wow. Just punch me in the face, why don’t you.”

“Sorry,” Rin laughs, not sounding sorry at all. “I was just making an honest guess.”

A terrifyingly on-target guess is what it was, really. Mia groans, grabbing a pillow to flip onto her face before letting her arm flop onto the bed.

“I _know_ it’s my fault,” Mia grumbles into the fabric. “I just don’t know how to fix it and it sucks.”

“You know… I think it’s not as bad as you tell yourself it is.”

Mia scoffs. “And what makes you say that?”

“You never give yourself enough credit for being a good person. You think you’re like this _super_ badass loner who’s had to shut her heart off to protect her baby brother from the _cruel_ and _awful_ world,” Rin says in an insultingly dramatic voice. “But—” she squeals when Mia pinches her in the stomach, slapping her hand away. _“But,”_ she insists, grabbing Mia’s wrist and throwing it back at her. “You’ve never let the world break you. From day one, all you’ve ever wanted was to save as many people as possible. Keep them safe. Maybe even make them happy, if you could.”

And Mia’s glad her face is covered because Rin’s faith in her kinda makes her want to cry _again_ and she’s getting sick of it. 

“Did you forget I used to steal blood beads from people?” 

“No, but I get it. You sort people into clear categories of ‘enemy’ and ‘friend’ because you care so much you’d drop dead from exhaustion if you let yourself care about everyone. But it doesn’t take a lot to get into the friend category because you’re a softie.”

Mia snorts. “Just because I’m nice to you, doesn’t mean I’m nice to everyone.”

“Case in point,” Rin argues back, “you nearly got yourself killed making sure Yakumo didn’t get pushed off a cliff on day one of joining the team.”

“Well—” Mia huffs. “It was only fair. I despise being in people’s debt.”

“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.”

“Okay, _Doctor Murasame,_ thank you for your psychoanalysis,” she laughs, yanking the pillow off her face to lightly whack Rin with it. 

“You also respond to positive feedback with token attempts at violence—”

 _“Enough,”_ Mia laughs, hitting her again a little harder. “I’m serious.”

“Okay, okay,” Rin giggles. “So, what, I guess you’re hoping to get Karen and Aurora’s growth shot when they finish it?”

“Ugh. Didn’t we establish there’s no real point?”

“Speak for yourself.” 

Mia rolls her eyes. “I thought you liked being nice and aerodynamic.”

“Yeah, but I’ve been aerodynamic for ten years,” Rin whines. “No _way_ I’m passing up the chance to grow huge honkers.”

“Huge—” Mia snorts. “Huge _what?”_

“Badonkers. You know. Bahoogas,” she says, sitting up to mimic grabbing her imaginary big boobs. “Hagongalas. A real set of dobonhonkeros.” 

Her gesturing gets more vulgar and ridiculous and Mia presses a fist over her cackling.

“Just some massive bonkhonagahoogs—”

 _“Stop,”_ Mia coughs, on the verge of tears as she whaps Rin again. 

She sticks her tongue out at Mia like a brat, grinning maniacally. “Just promise me you won’t go falling in love with me when I get boobalicious.”

Mia _chokes._ “I beg your _pardon?”_

“Come on, we all know you have a thing for titties—”

Mia _thwaps_ her with the pillow so hard it explodes, but she pays it no mind as she continues to thwack Rin with the near empty pillowcase.

"I—" _whap—_ "do—" _whap—_ _"not!"_ she says through her own laughter, beating down as Rin just curls up in defense while cackling. "How— _dare_ you—"

"Whoah whoah wait—" Rin catches the now-saggy pillowcase with one hand, clearing away the loose cotton from her face as she sits up. "Did you hear that?"

It freaks Mia out sometimes, how hawk-like Rin can get at the drop of a penny— she stops, deflating instantly as she strains her ears for whatever it is that Rin heard. "Hear... what?"

"It sounded like glass dropping to the floor." And, ah— she would have to watch out for every stray sound that hasn't been accounted for in a workshop full of volatile weapon parts, wouldn't she? "I swear I— holy shit."

"What?" Mia's getting thoroughly scared now, whipping around when Rin points at the ground behind her, and afraid that there's some bit of gunpowder about to go off or something but it's just—

Io's amber blood bead, resting against the wheel of one of Rin's carts, glinting serenely. 

"Oh, fuck."


	3. but i'm unprepared, oh, i've never felt like this

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Family continues to be a contentious topic for Mia, and Io's softness only hurts all the more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IM PROUD OF THIS ONE ACTUALLY the found family scene is kind of long but im glad i put in the dynamics that i did... this is kind of a emotion-heavy chapter so the first half being a bit longer and lighter in tone fits. 
> 
> Things will get better for Mia soon I promise SDVSDF im putting the poor girl through a fucking emotional triathlon every chapter but like... she's got layers of repression and im trying to punch through as many of them as possible before anything major happens with Io
> 
> THANK YOU to the like sdvsdf two people reading this, this is kind of a passion project rn so I'm having fun writing it but having all the touches i put in be validated is so much

Sif is so much less upset about the whole thing, it kind of sets Mia off. 

She’s not even partway through the hurried apology that she started before she even fully stepped into Sif’s room, holding out the amber bead when Sif  _ stops _ her with warm hands placed over her own.

“It’s okay,” she says, as if it really is. “I’m not mad.”

And what is Mia supposed to say to that? Sif looks— surprised, obviously, but not upset in the slightest and Mia can’t fathom  _ why.  _ She just towers over Mia with a smile as she always does and it doesn’t make any sense.

“I— I  _ swear  _ I don’t know how it ended up with me, I—”

“I believe you, okay?” Sif laughs, shaking her head. “You don’t have to apologize. Thank you for bringing it back to me.”

As if Mia would ever— as if she would ever  _ not  _ bring it back? Yeah, sure, sometimes she wishes that she could hold onto it instead but she knows that it’s absolutely not her place to even really think about it. She just watches as Sif gently takes the bead and places it back into the inner pocket of her jacket, right over her heart, where it belongs.

“Hey.” Sif puts her hand on Mia’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Wh—” she blinks. “I—” 

_ Is  _ she okay? There’s no reason she shouldn’t be, but— she stands there, still feeling like… like she has to do  _ something.  _

“It just… fell out of my pocket or something.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t know how it got there.”

“I know.”

“I don’t— I didn’t steal it.”

At that, Sif so very  _ gently  _ touches Mia’s chin to tilt it upwards, peering down at her with dark eyes. “Is that what you’re worried about? That I’d think you stole it?”

Mia looks away. “Why wouldn’t you?”

“Why  _ would  _ I?” Sif grasps both of Mia’s shoulders, then, squeezing lightly. “I know you’d never do that.”

Mia can feel her fingers digging into her palms. “What other explanation is there?”

And it feels odd, suddenly arguing for the plausibility of her own guilt when she’d stomped into the room  _ desperate  _ to convince Sif otherwise— the fact that she didn’t even have to start defending herself leaves her feeling so… hollow.

“Than you inexplicably doing something so out of character that I’d worry something had happened to you?” And she says it with a  _ laugh.  _ “It probably went with you when you dispersed.”

And how would that make any sense at all? Mia shakes her head. “But it wasn’t— it’s not mine.”

“We still don’t really know how dispersal differentiates between what does and doesn’t go with the revenant.” Another comforting squeeze. “I caught you when you passed out. If it somehow jumped from me to you, it wouldn’t be the strangest part of what happened.”

Right. Anomalies abound, not one of them explained in full save for in theories and maybes. Mia suddenly understands Karen’s annoyance with the lack of a concrete answer.

“You know, it actually…” Sif says quietly. “It actually makes me feel better, knowing that it went with you.”

Mia’s head snaps up at that— Sif’s smiling, warmly, with her molten brown eyes. “What?”

“You remember how Aurora described the scans they did?” She gently tucks some of Mia’s hair behind her ear, letting her fingers linger at the curve of her jaw. “Made of the same composition as the Weeping Tree, but at an exponential density— like a diamond is to carbon. I… it’s silly, but I like to think that it’s as much a part of her as the mistle roots.”

And it’s Sif’s turn to look away— or, more accurately, to look  _ through  _ Mia. The faraway stare passes by her entirely and into whatever melancholy thought is taking over Sif. 

“She wouldn’t have let anything bad happen. I’m… I’m glad it went with you. Makes me feel like she was watching out for you.” 

And then she’s back, brushing the backs of her fingers by the edge of Mia’s cheekbones, giving her a look that’s so affectionate Mia can’t stand it. She can’t stand how it’s just the same thing Nicola said to her the last time this happened, in different words, and she can’t stand how they talk about Io like she’s still  _ here  _ and not gone forever.

The Weeping Tree— it’s not her. It’s just an  _ organism  _ that she turned herself into, and whatever sentience or awareness it retains in order to keep the mistle and bloodspring network alive is— hardly enough to qualify as a person with wants or desires and it’s naive, stupid,  _ infuritating  _ that people keep pretending that any part of Io is still here in any meaningful way. 

The  _ person  _ they called Io— the incredible, soft-hearted and resilient individual that lit up their lives— is gone. She’s never coming back, and they just have to  _ accept  _ that—

But it wouldn’t be Mia’s place to tell Sif how to mourn the girl she loved, would it? If thinking that Io is still somehow watching out for her—  _ caring  _ about her— helps her cope with the fact that her lover is gone, who is Mia to say anything about it? 

No one. In the story of Io and Sif, she’s just some nobody who has the audacity to be bitter about things that are none of her concern.

“So don’t worry, okay? And give me some more credit,” Sif laughs, enveloping her into another one of her towering hugs that Mia wishes weren’t so comforting. “I trust you.”

She shouldn’t. She shouldn’t, but Mia bites her tongue and tries to accept it because it’s not Sif’s problem. Her selfishness is her own cross to bear, and she reminds herself— there’s no point having her own pity party about how terrible a person she is without doing anything about it. 

Sif trusts her, and she can live up to that. She can be better. She just has to keep trying. 

* * *

Somehow, she manages not to cause any new incidents for an entire month. It’s almost peaceful.

Well, maybe that’s not quite the word for it— nothing is ever really peaceful inside the Gaol, but there’s a certain sense of routine now that makes all the difference. They draw lots to decide patrol schedules for the month, have their weekly check-ins where they discuss their findings as well as get a check-up with Karen and Aurora, and life is… good. Not easy, by any means— there are still Lost to kill, supply routes to clear, bandit groups to subdue, humans to rescue— but it’s not a fight for day-to-day survival anymore. 

Everyone’s getting their fair share of blood beads on a regular basis— there’s enough breathing room for settlements to actually be sending trade caravans to each other, and Mia hears that some places are actually opening up things like restaurants and schools. There are reunions happening all the time now that it’s so much easier to send letters and find people, and Mia just has this feeling that… they’re slowly putting the world back together. There’s some semblance of civilization, of  _ community  _ coming back to life, and it’s wonderful. 

The peaceful mundanity tends to seep into everyday life as well. Mia actually finds the time to be reading a book inbetween her patrols, sitting next to her friends who are also enjoying their time off. Nearly all of them are piled into the couches at the far end, save for Rin and Louis— Nicola’s also absent, having declined the invitation to come over in favor of going to his swordsmanship lessons with Jack. The jukebox plays some pleasant but unremarkable song, the sunlight streams through the broken walls of the chapel, and it’s…

It’s nice. It would remind her of times before the Collapse, but… well. Taking care of Nicola didn’t leave her a lot of time for a social life, and she wasn’t a particularly charming person to begin with.

“Aren’t you cold?”

Mia glances up at the way Yakumo’s wrinkling his nose at her and rolls her eyes, crossing her legs. “I’m technically a walking corpse, I don’t get cold anymore.” 

She readjusts her one-handed hold on the bottom of her book, resting it in her lap as she props her elbow on the arm of the lone chaise. Yakumo laughs at her from his seat on the far couch.

“Me too,” he says, setting his next move on the chess board that’s sitting diagonally between him and Emily on the corner of the coffee table. “But we’re not invincible. It’s almost November now— even Murasame’s put on a hoodie, y’know.”

Mia glances over to where Rin’s rearranging the armor displays, wearing a zip-up that looks  _ suspiciously  _ like one of her own. She sighs. Perks and downsides of having a best friend who’s the same size as her, she supposes…

“It’s my day off.” She shrugs, going back to her book. “I can wear something nice without worrying about getting blood or grime on it, so I did.”

She’s not the only one, either— Emily’s wrapped up in a cardigan over her henley shirt that looks so terribly nice on her, and even Sif’s pulled out one of her fancier button-ups from her never-ending rotation of collared shirts. 

“I can understand a bit of form over function, but isn’t that a bit much?” Yakumo quirks his brow at her bemusedly as he waits for Emily’s turn. “It’s just a plain white shirt with shorts.”

Mia can feel her eyes nearly roll into the back of her head. It’s decidedly not a plain white shirt, actually— it’s a _very_ nice strapless off-shoulder top that she was lucky enough to find a while back. Paired with her high-waisted jean shorts (cute, but far too impractical to wear into battle), the outfit shows off her legs and entire clavicle-shoulders-neck area that she just so _happens_ to be rather proud of. She even put her hair in a crown braid updo to tie the whole look together.

“It’s not plain, thank you very much,” she deadpans. “You just don’t know how to appreciate a good-looking girl.” 

She  _ does  _ look up to give Emily a knowing smirk, just to make sure she realizes that Mia was talking about her too— she smiles bashfully, blushes behind the sleeves of her slightly oversized cardigan, and Mia goes back to her book with a  _ wholly _ satisfied grin. If the poor girl’s going to be pining over a clueless jock, Mia might as well make sure she’s still getting the appreciation she deserves. 

(Yeah, call her a hopeless womanizer, whatever. Emily knows she doesn’t really mean anything by it— the fact of the matter is, the act of complimenting a girl is its own delightful reward in and of itself.)

“You know what?” Yakumo says, half a challenge in his tone before he sighs. “I’m just gonna concede to that.”

Mia snorts. “You’re going to be conceding to a lot more than that if you don’t start paying attention. She’s a few turns away from a checkmate.”

She’s not actually, but it makes Yakumo straighten up and tunnel-vision on the chess board anyway just like Mia intended him to— Emily once mentioned how she loves that his eyes get extra green when he’s focused. Mia doesn’t really see it, but who is she to begrudge her the simpler pleasures of pining? 

(Who’s going to end up losing the match, she wonders? Yakumo, from overthinking it, or Emily, from the aforementioned pining?)

She catches Sif staring in her direction— which isn’t all that unusual when she’s doing paperwork, but for some reason Sif’s actually staring  _ at  _ her and not the space between them while brooding over one serious topic or another. Mia waits to catch her eye before raising a brow in her best ‘pray tell’ look.

Sif seems to contemplate her answer for a moment, hair falling over her eyes as her necklace hangs out of her shirt at the angle she’s hunched over her papers. Then her gaze does another slow, deliberate circuit of Mia’s collarbones before settling on eye contact again as the corner of her mouth lifts just a tiny bit—

And Mia looks away, because the drafty chapel feels a little warm all of a sudden. She’d  _ really _ rather not think about what that… that  _ smoldering  _ look might mean in the context of the previous conversation, no, no thank you very much. She almost lets out an audible ‘thank god’ when the mistle shimmers with an incoming visitor to interrupt… whatever the hell kind of moment that was.

“Look who it is,” Yakumo laughs, perking up. “Cerberus Colonel Davis himself!”

Davis smiles as he steps onto the chapel floor, a large box held under his arm. “It’s been a while, everyone.” 

He’s forced to set the box down when Rin hops over to give him a delighted hug— Louis chuckles good-naturedly as he picks it up and sets it on Davis’s old work counter they never got rid of. 

“It’s good to see you, Davis.”

“It’s been too long,” Rin complains as she steps back, giving Davis a light punch on the chestplate. “How come you never swing by anymore?”

“A promotion isn’t just a pay raise, you know,” Mia chides her as she migrates towards the small gathering along with everyone else. “I’m sure he’s a busy man.”

“That I am,” he sighs. “But, I heard Sergeant Su was finally spending some of her paid vacation,” he says with a slightly exasperated smile aimed at Emily— she shrinks a little sheepishly. “So I thought I’d find time to come by with a few gifts while you were all gathered.” He scans the room with a frown. “Well, most of you— I see Coco has been keeping herself busy.”

“We barely see her these days after she accidentally ended up starting a trade network while trying to help other merchants— long story, we’ll tell you later,” Rin chatters. “You said something about presents?”

Another of his deep, warm laughs— “Yes, I did. These are the latest round of gifts from your grateful admirers at the settlement. Your little band of heroes is building quite the fanbase, you know.”

Mia frowns as Rin and Yakumo head over to open the box and dig in, Louis trailing behind them to peer over their shoulders. “That’s not a problem, is it?” She crosses her arms warily. “For Cerberus, I mean. If we’re gaining too much influence…”

“It’s nothing for you to be worried about,” he says firmly. “You’re responsible for almost half the human and revenant rescues we’ve logged— I won’t have anyone disparaging your efforts over concerns of politics or power. You have my word.”

Mia doesn’t know if she’s more surprised by the half of her that wholeheartedly believes him, or the half of her that scoffs at the thought of a politician with integrity— a  _ military  _ officer, at that. She knows that Davis is a good man, but… Frankly? The entire military structure of the provisional government skeeves her out and she can’t help but think that there  _ has  _ to be some sort of eventual reckoning where the emergency martial law is done away with—

Ugh. She’s thinking like her dad again. 

Davis gives her another kind smile— a rather fatherly smile, but she’s not going to unpack that right now— before he pulls a small paper folder from his pack. 

“But, if we’re on the topic of Cerberus,” he starts, “I was actually hoping to speak to you about a potential mission.”

She waits for him to turn his attention to Sif at some point during his sentence, but he doesn’t. He looks at her. He’s still looking at her. 

“Oh.” She blinks. “Me?” 

Davis laughs— she even hears Sif chuckle a little bit.

“Why are you so surprised?” she asks Mia, hands clasped behind her back. “You get hired for recon all the time.”

“Yeah, but—” she glances at Emily. “Getting a freelancer contract to help Emily or— or Coco giving me store credit for finding stuff is a bit different than…” She gestures at Davis, trying to come up with the words.

“An official request from a ranking officer?” Davis offers. “Fair enough. If you’re willing to consider it, I’d like to give you the details in private,” he says, trailing off inquiringly. 

A mission important enough to require discretion. Wow. She looks over to Emily, who’s giving her a determined and encouraging smile as if she already knew about this— which, yeah, she probably did— and then at Sif, who is… unreadable, but to be honest Mia’s not trying very hard anyway.

“Oh. Yeah, sure—” She points over to the other side of the chapel with her thumb. “We can talk on the patio.” 

Davis nods gratefully, letting her lead the way. 

“Better not be trying to poach her as a Cerberus scout,” Yakumo yells. “She’s  _ our _ hawkeye, you know!” 

“Yeah, she’s ours!” Rin chimes in, her head still stuck in the box. Mia just rolls her eyes.

(And maybe it should annoy her to hear people trying to  _ claim  _ her like that, but in all honesty… it’s kind of nice.)

“So,” she says, turning around as they turn onto the balcony and out of earshot. “What can I do for you?”

Should she sit? Invite him to sit? She doesn’t know why she feels so stilted all of a sudden— it’s just Davis. He’s a friend. It’s just that right now, he suddenly feels like an authority figure that she’s in a serious meeting with. 

Well— those two things aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, Mia supposes.

“Nothing urgent or serious,” he reassures her, and she tries not to be too obvious about how much less tense she feels. “One of our surveys came back with some possibility that we may have found Columbia’s campus. I was hoping you could give the site a look— not as a definitive recon mission, mind you. Just a confirmation that it’s not a false lead would be a tremendous help.”

Oh,  _ boy.  _ She hasn’t heard that name in literal years. “I guess there’s no point asking you how you know I used to go there, huh?”

His eyes crinkle apologetically. “Extensive background checks were performed on every revenant revived for Operation Queenslayer, I’m afraid. Though you didn’t wake up until after the war was over, Cerberus still has your files on hand.”

“Well…” she sighs. She doesn’t like it, but it makes sense. “Yeah, alright. I can head over and see if I recognize anything,” she says, reaching for the folder that she assumes is the detailed mission briefing. “What’s my deadline?”

“The sooner the better, but anytime within the next two months is enough.” He hands her the folder. “Coordinates and miasmic status is in the first file.”

And it’s only when he says that that she realizes there’s actually two folders, stacked together. Mia eyes the second one warily. “And in the other one…?”

He hesitates, which only makes her more anxious. Clasping his hands behind his back, he shifts his weight before speaking again. “A gift. I thought you would appreciate a little discretion, considering what it is. Not long ago, Coco told me a bit about the woman you knew as Carmilla.”

Mia tries not to crease the folders in her grip. “I see.”

“It took a bit of digging, as she was using a pseudonym, but I was able to find her records.”

And Mia’s holding them in her hands right now, isn’t she? 

“I know your history with her is… complicated.” And Mia closes her eyes when he says that, because  _ wow  _ that is an understatement and a half. “You don’t have to open the file if you’d rather not— it’s understandable if you decide that you don’t want to know any more. I wanted you to have the choice.”

His gift was the choice, not the file itself. Isn’t that just so awfully nice and unlike nearly every other adult in her life before she died? 

“I…” She looks up at him. “Thank you. I…” 

He saves her from having to come up with an appropriate response when he puts his gauntleted hand on her shoulder with a smile. “Consider it a token of my gratitude,” he says. “You and Sifra helped me find the answers I needed, after all.”

And how is it so easy to forget that Davis had lost pretty much  _ everything,  _ even his own name? He’s so… put-together and stable. Sure of himself, despite knowing nothing of his history other than what she and Sifra were able to find for him. Mia suddenly feels kind of small, standing there next to him— and not just because he’s a head and a half taller than her with nearly twice her shoulder span. 

The gadget strapped to his arm beeps, and he lets out a deep sigh.

“Duty calls?” Mia offers with a sympathetic smile. Davis snorts as he takes his hand off her shoulder to click a few buttons on the gadget. 

“Indeed. No rest for the wicked, I suppose.” He shakes his head. “In any case, thank you for taking on the assignment. Let us know if there’s any support we can provide.” 

“Yessir,” she laughs, giving him a little salute as she walks him back to the main part of the chapel. “And, hey. Don’t work yourself too hard, okay? You rib Emily about it, but you’re just as bad.”

“Fair enough,” he concedes. “You take care, too, Mia.” 

There’s a chorus of goodbyes from everyone as he heads off, and then Mia makes her way to where everyone’s huddled around the coffee table that’s now hosting the box of gifts.

“Okay,” Sif sighs. “Who wants the handmade soap.”

She looks so  _ upset  _ about being the designated gift administrator. Mia doesn’t envy her position of scruffing squabbles before they begin, but it can’t be helped— she’s the only one who’s mostly impartial to nearly anything they receive, and most of it’s unofficially addressed to her anyway. The Queenslayer tends to leave a strong impression on people.

“Me!” 

“I’d like to try it, as well.”

Sif hands the small package over to Louis. “Sorry, Murasame, you had the last batch of them.”

Rin pouts but doesn’t complain. “Fair.”

“Next is…” Sif contemplates the inside of the box before reaching in again. “A tin of chocolates.” 

Everyone except for Yakumo raises a hand, and Sif gives Mia a helpless look. 

“I’ll take it.” Mia steps forward to rescue her from the responsibility, reaching out with her free hand. Sif gratefully hands it to her over the table.

“No fair.” Rin sulks harder. “Now you’re just playing favourites.”

Mia rolls her eyes as she tucks the folders under her arm to pry the tin open with both hands. “Rules are rules. I haven’t taken anything from our last two deliveries, so I get priority. Besides, I’m perfectly willing to share if your offer is good enough,” she says, even as she pops one of the little chocolate squares in her mouth before closing the lid.

She’s probably going to end up handing the whole thing over to Emily later so that she can share with Louis and Rin anyway. For now, she’s managed to grab everyone’s attention enough that Sif’s free to pick the next bidding item from the box in peace. 

“Does covering one of your patrol shifts sound fair?” 

It’s a little funny that Louis is actually negotiating for it, though. “Hmm. Maybe. Anyone else?”

“I can make a super duper scope for Brodiaea!”

“Ooh, tempting.” She turns the tin lightly in her hands, pretending to contemplate. “Getting an extra day off does sound nice, though. Any offers from you, Em?”

Emily deflates a little, shrinking into her cardigan. “Oh, well… I don’t really go with you guys on patrols enough to count, so…” 

Mia’s about to admonish her— sure, she’s busy and isn’t a permanent part of their little gang, but she’s as much a member of the team as anyone else. 

Yakumo beats her to it. “But I do.” He leans forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “A full serving of Thai red curry, all yours.”

“Sold by a  _ landslide.” _ Mia happily tosses the tin at Yakumo, smiling as he catches it deftly out of the air. “And you better use real coconut milk.”

“Count on it.” He leans over and offers the tin to Emily with a grin. “Chocolates for Sergeant Su?” 

“Aw… thanks…” She takes the box with a grateful blush, cradling it in her half-sleeved palms. “You didn’t have to do that…”

He just sits back, throwing an arm over the back of the couch. “You know I always got your back.”

And Mia’s almost jealous of the way they smile at each other so, so affectionately— it makes her chest feel kind of tight, honestly. It’s sweet. She bags on Yakumo over it but the truth is that he’s a good guy, and more importantly, a good guy  _ for _ Emily. His obliviousness is a bit painful but Mia’s sure he’ll figure it out eventually. Maybe. With a little help. 

“Okay… scented candles, anyone?” 

“Oh.” Louis perks up, because he’s  _ always  _ running out of candles. “What are they scented with?” 

“Uhh…” Sif sniffs lightly. “Bergamot, I think.”

And Mia’s about to chime in with a claim but decides against it because— well, it looks like poor Louis hasn’t actually gotten anything yet, and she suddenly feels a bit… dry. As if she’s forgotten to have a blood bead this morning, which, to be fair, might’ve happened. 

It only takes her one step towards the storeroom for her to realize something’s wrong. Something’s very, very wrong because she’s dizzy all of a sudden and her chest hurts like she’s  _ starving,  _ like she hasn’t had anything to drink in days—

“Oh, this is a really nice pen, actually… Mia?”

She gingerly places the folders on the coffee table, not trusting herself to hold onto them. 

“Hey—” She thinks she sees Sif standing up, she’s not sure. “What’s wrong?”

She’s— not sure? Nothing should be wrong but it feels like the muscles in her heart are about to cave in on themselves and she can’t quite breathe properly, kind of like the time she almost frenzied— 

Oh, hell.

Every single nerve ending in her body stabs into her at the same time. 

_ “Mia!” _

Pain— the dull crack of someone’s skull falling onto the marble floor— screaming, thrashing—

(Underneath it all, there’s a dull part of her that’s exasperated. Really? She can’t go another month without another horrifically painful experience?)

“Get her a blood bead,  _ now!” _

Steel arms instead of the cold floor— she claws into Sif’s jacket, trying not to hurt her—

“It won’t be enough— she’s about to turn!” 

“What do we do?!”

“Hold on—”

The glint of Yakumo’s handgun— then darkness, Sif’s shirt against her face, a vice grip around her—

_ “What do you think you’re doing?!” _

“Buying us enough time to call the doctors!”

Make it quick, please— 

* * *

And suddenly, she can breathe— oh thank fucking god, she can breathe. 

“Mia.” A soft voice murmurs into her ear, and, oh. That’s lace that she’s coughing into, not cotton, meaning the person cradling her isn’t Sif. “Are you alright?”

“Guh. I feel gross.” She goes limp, groaning into Io’s dress. “What happened?”

“I… I’m not sure.” Right. As if her imaginary crush is going to know things that she can’t figure out. “You received a sudden, concentrated dose of miasma. The chocolates you received may have been contaminated.”

Well, that checks out. Solid line of reasoning, too, she’s impressed with herself. “Good thing I taste-tested first, then.”

Io’s hold on her tightens somewhat. “Mia…”

Right. Cutting down on the morbid jokes at her own expense. “Sorry.” She pulls away, managing to prop herself up with her hand against the ground beside Io’s legs. “I just meant that I’m glad no one else took any before we realized something was wrong.” 

Io looks at her sadly, and… gosh. It’s been a month since her last dream visit and she’s still as pretty as ever. Ethereal, serene, her eyes glinting in the low streetlight…

Wait, what?

She looks around. “Where are we?”

“Morningside park, I think,” Io says. “As it was before the Thorns appeared.” 

Oh, right. Mia recognizes the landscape now, with the quaint streetlamps and trees. It’s a little weird how the starless sky seems so unfamiliar— in the lack of light pollution of the post-apocalypse, she’d almost forgotten what a blank night sky looked like. 

“Figures. I  _ was  _ talking about college for a bit.” 

Io looks at her. “Did you come here often?”

“Between classes, yeah, since it was so close by.” Jeez, it feels like it was a lifetime ago. “I wasn’t living in the dorms and it felt kind of weird just hanging around on campus or in my car, so…”

She didn’t really make any friends to hang out with, either. Not that she was really trying. Being a legacy baby kind of soured the concept of socializing for her— everyone she’d talk to would be someone who had actually earned their admission and deserved to be there more than her. And if they weren’t, they’d be other pompous rich kids who got in because of their parents, and she wasn’t particularly keen on them. 

“I’m sorry,” Io says, brushing a bit of hair out of Mia’s face. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”

And she’s suddenly very aware of the fact that she’s still being cradled, half-sitting in Io’s lap— her ears feel kind of warm and she pointedly tries not to seem embarrassed because Io’s face is so very close. So very close, and not about to turn away anytime soon, it looks like. Io stares at her with eyes half-hooded by her elegantly creased eyelids and Mia coughs nervously. 

“Do I—” she rubs her cheek self-consciously. “Is my face still weird from the miasma?”

Io shakes her head. “No. I…” Her fingertips lightly trace the edge of her face. “I’ve never seen you wear your hair like this.”

“Oh.” She laughs weakly. “Y’know. Day off. Wanted to dress up.”

Then Io’s eyes drop to her neckline— it’s only for like half a second before she looks back up but it still  _ happens  _ and Mia feels like she’s going to burst into flames. “You look very nice.”

She says it so  _ quietly  _ and  _ tenderly  _ in her susurrous voice and Mia’s going to  _ die, _ actually.

“Oh, I…” Io’s hold on her waist loosens as she furrows her brows. “I’m sorry… Did I make you uncomfortable?”

“No— of course not I just—” Io watches her try to string a sentence together with such a worried expression that she realizes she probably looks just about as pathetic as she feels right now. “I—”

And then she gives up because she feels like she’s bursting into a high fever and there’s really no salvaging her dignity at this point. She covers her face with both hands, rolls off of Io’s lap onto the grass, and curls in on herself like an overcooked shrimp. 

“Mia?” Io’s usually disaffected cadence actually pitches up a bit in concern. “Are… are you alright?”

“Peachy,” Mia squeaks into her hands. She doesn’t even have it in her to sound facetious, it just comes out a bit panicked. 

“You’re… very red.”

Oh, good, she’s blushing all the way to the back of her back of her neck too. She loves being pasty and easily flushed. 

“Of course I am, you—” Dear lord in heaven,  _ please  _ let her get through a sentence before choking on her own embarrassment. “Goddammit.”

For a moment, there’s merciful silence— just the rustling of the trees and the vague sounds of cars passing in the distance as she tries to calm her heart rate.

Then, she hears just the  _ quietest  _ exhale of a stifled laugh.

“You’re  _ laughing,”  _ she wails, falling completely slack into the grass. “I’m about to die of embarrassment and you’re  _ laughing  _ at me.” 

“I’m sorry.” She sounds pretty and elegantly amused but not sorry in the least. “I… had forgotten how endearing you are when flustered.”

“Oh my god.” Mia squeezes her eyes shut. “I’m going to explode.”

Another quiet laugh, and then the rustling of cloth and grass— Mia wonders if Io’s laid down as well or gotten up. She doesn’t roll over to check.

“I never noticed that I had such an effect on you.” Io’s voice comes from a little closer behind her instead of above her. “I don’t know why.”

Mia picks at the grass. “Give me some credit,” she grumbles. “I wasn’t  _ completely _ helpless about it.” 

Silence. Mia rips up the grass one blade at a time, watching the green stain her fingers. 

“When did it start?”

She shrugs. “I’m not sure. I… suppose I was always attracted to you to begin with. There were a lot of little things that I started liking about you over time, and then…”

_ “Mia.” _

_ Oh, perfect. You figured it was Sif following you into your room, but this is worse. You don’t want to see Io’s pitying look. You don’t need it. _

_ “This isn’t something you can fix, so don’t bother,” you snap, sneering up at her horridly impassive face.  _

_ And you’re not exactly sure what kind of reaction you were expecting— but it wasn’t the mild scowl that Io’s brows furrow into as she stares you down.  _

_ “I understand that you’re upset,” she says, even-toned as always, “and I will respect your wish to be left alone if that is truly what you want. But I do not think it is right for you to be angry with me when I am only trying to help.” _

_ You look down at the floor because you’re too much of a coward to look her in the eyes and deal with the guilt because she’s right. You shouldn’t take it out on her— god, she’s only ever wanted to be kind to you, and this is how you treat her? What’s wrong with you? Why are you like this? _

_ You see her step towards you before she gently reaches for your shaking fists. _

_ “Mia.” Her voice is so soft, you can hardly stand it. “Would you like to be left alone?” _

_ “No. Please,” you choke out pathetically. “Please don’t go. I’m— I’m sorry. For being mean. You didn’t deserve that.” _

_ The way she pulls you closer is so gentle, so soft, you feel yourself breaking to pieces in her arms.  _

_ “Thank you,” she murmurs quietly in your ear. “I understand. You don’t have to be afraid.” _

_ And you hold onto the back of her dress for dear life because you  _ **_are_ ** _ afraid. You’re so, so afraid of letting people see you where it hurts and it makes you so angry because it didn’t have to be like this. Yes— yes, your parents started it all, and you grew up knowing that weakness was unacceptable but Carmilla was the final nail in the coffin— you try your best to let people in and pretend that you’re fine but the truth is that part of you died in that house and it’s never coming back.  _

_ “It’s alright if you’re angry. If you’re sad, or if you don’t know how to feel.” she rubs your back in slow circles, and you feel like it’s the only thing keeping you together. “No one could blame you for being confused.” _

_ “I hate it,” you blubber between the sobs trying to burst out of your chest. “She was so cold to us and then— why did she do that? Why couldn’t she just talk to us?” _

_ You could have— maybe it was too late for you to make a family out of what you had, but you could have had something close. You could have been there for each other in the mess of this world, you didn’t have to be so lonely. She didn’t have to die alone. She didn’t have to die alone, but she did, and she let you hate her for so long and it’s not fair because— no, no, that doesn’t make it okay that she treated you like that. It doesn’t make it okay that she made you believe trust was nothing but weakness, that she stamped out the last bit of vulnerability you had left in you.  _

_ You didn’t need some stupid lesson in self-sufficiency or strength— the world was plenty cruel enough to teach you that on its own, you didn’t need that from her. You were— you were only eighteen, you were only eighteen and on your own and you needed someone to be there for you. You needed her to be there for you instead of killing what little faith you had left before she went and died to protect you.  _

_ Why did she treat you like that, if she loved you so much? How is it fair that she’s dead and gone and you’ll never have answers to any of this? _

_ “I’m sorry,” Io whispers into your hair, pressing her lips to the side of your head. “To mourn the relationship you could have had isn’t easy. But you’re not alone.” She holds you close, and you just want to crumble into her. “I’m here. I’m here for you.” _

Not anymore, she isn’t.

The freeze-frame end of the memory crumbles into the pond, and Mia sighs. 

“Well… there you have it.” She tries to dust off the torn bits of grass off her hand. 

“That was when…”

“When I realized how I felt about you, yeah.” 

Also the first and only time she’d ever talked to anyone about Carmilla other than Nicola, but that’s neither here nor there.

“I… see.” Io sounds unsure. “It’s…”

Mia snorts. “Probably a lot less romantic than you expected.”

“A bit.” She pauses. “I’m not sure I understand.”

Mia rolls onto her back, finding that Io is indeed lying next to her. On her side, facing Mia, looking troubled and oh so graceful in the night’s ambiance. 

“It was a reality check for me, in a sense. I realized that you weren’t someone who needed my help anymore.” She shifts onto her side as well, letting her hands fall onto the grass between them, just a hair's breadth away from Io’s. “If anything, you were… a lot nicer and level-headed than I was. It completely humbled me.”

Io’s eyes flit from Mia’s face to her hands before she hesitantly reaches forward to grasp them gently. “I didn’t mean to discourage you.”

Mia snorts. “Not like that. I just meant…” she sighs. “While I was busy being too self-absorbed to notice, you’d already found your footing. By that point, you’d really and truly become your own person,” she mumbles into the grass, closing her eyes. “And a wonderful person, at that.”

And then it’s quiet again while Io idly plays with her hands— tracing the edge of her knuckles, drawing lines up and down between her fingers. A tender moment if there ever was one; they lie there, alone together, blanketed by soft silence as Io studies the panes of her hand. It’s lovely. Vain. False. Hypocritical, even.

Io stops, entwining their fingers together instead. “What is it?” 

Mia doesn’t open her eyes. “Just frustrated,” she says, scoffing at herself. “I get so angry at other people for talking about you like you’re still around somehow, and then I go and have these stupid dreams about you—” she stops, feeling herself choking up. “Where I remember you so well that I forget it’s not really you.” 

Io grasps her a little tighter, and god, Mia wishes it didn’t feel so real. 

“I’m sorry.” Her voice wavers and she’s really on the verge of full-on crying, but she can see the night get brighter through her closed eyes and she knows she’s about to wake up anyhow. “I know, I know I shouldn’t be using you like this— I just miss you so much. You left so suddenly, and I— I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” she keens, her face crumpling. “Why didn’t you give me a chance to say goodbye?” 

She doesn’t dare open her eyes, even as her frame starts shaking with choked-back sobs— all she can feel is the sun on her back and Io gripping onto her hand for dear life.

“I’m sorry.” And it’s so much worse that Io sounds like she’s about to cry, too. “I’m so sorry.”

* * *

When she wakes, her bones are lined with lead and her throat is made of sandpaper.

“It’s okay.” Someone— a young boy, it sounds like— gently lifts her head, and she feels the cool spout of a blood bead on her mouth. “Take slow sips, okay?”

She listens— as much as she can, anyway, because the blood bead makes her feel like she’s finally taking her first breaths after being suffocated. After some shaky, imperfect gulps, the empty bead is taken away and she sinks into the bed. 

Her bed. Maybe. The one she has at Karen and Aurora’s place— which would make sense, considering everything. Mia blinks, trying to take in the details of the room with the one eye that seems to be working.

“Wh—” she touches her face, finding a wad of gauze over her left eye. “Why is my eye taped over…?”

“It hasn’t gone back to normal yet. Karen says it will eventually, as long as it’s covered from any kind of light or dust in the air.” 

So no permanent odd-eye, like Davis has from the time he nearly turned. That’s… a small relief. She looks up at the boy, finally, and does her umpteenth double-take at how different Nicola looks— his baby cheeks are half-gone, his growing hair is pulled back into a small bunnytail, and he’s about the size of a ten or eleven year old. As he has been, for the past two weeks— it’s just hard to get used to.

Right now, there’s... something about his expression that seems so much heavier as he sits at her bedside. Mia swallows, weakly taking her hand from her eyepatch to fall onto his instead— he clasps it with both hands, giving her the saddest smile she’s ever seen him make. 

(And maybe the heartbreak over Io primed her for it, but she would probably be crying right now if she weren’t so drained.)

“How are you feeling?”

“Like I got dipped in lava before getting punted into an ice bath,” Mia groans. “What happened?”

“The chocolate you ate was poisoned.” Okay, so she was on target. “They’re trying to figure out who sent it.”

She frowns. “Wait, what do you mean? Cerberus keeps a strict log of everything that goes in and out of the settlements— they would have the name on file.”

She would know. The first time she tried to send Davis a birthday gift, they gave her a customs form so long she actually just decided to give it to him in person.

“The chocolates weren’t on the list of stuff when they looked at it, so it’s… harder to find out who put it there.”

Mia grimaces. If it made it into the box without being logged, that means it was placed there after they had finished the paperwork— which  _ then  _ means that there’s a chance it was an inside job, and if someone went to that much trouble to make sure it arrived at the chapel without being detected…

“Crap.” She winces. “Someone was trying to get rid of Sif on purpose.”

Nicola just gives her a somber nod. “I… overheard Yakumo talking about some gangs who weren’t happy about you guys rescuing their thralls.” 

Of course. She always knew their do-gooding was going to come back to bite them in the ass because people will always be  _ people,  _ human or not. For every person like Sif or Io who dedicate their lives to improving the world, there will always be some jackass who  _ wants  _ the world to be unfair and easy to take advantage of. 

Ugh. And then there's the possibility of someone from Cerberus itself wanting to eliminate Sif, isn't there? Her being an uncontrolled variable in the extremely delicate balance of power inside the Gaol and all. Mia guesses it was about time for their first assassination attempt, all things considered. 

“How long was I out?”

“Two days,” he says. “You regenerated in a few hours, but…”

Unconscious— for two entire days?

She squeezes his hand. “I’m sorry.”

He squeezes back, furrowing his brows. “What for?”

“I didn’t mean to worry you again.” Another scare, just over a month after everyone thought she was dead for a whole week. “I—”

“It’s okay.” And he says it with such a wry smile, which isn’t something she’d ever seen from him. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Still— I left you alone for two whole days, I—”

“It’s  _ okay,”  _ he tries again, shaking his head. “I wasn’t alone. I had Karen and Aurora— and everyone else, too. You don’t have to worry about me so much.”

But still, but still, but still— she swallows back the anxious thoughts because she knows he doesn’t like it when she frets like that. It’s overbearing and he’s right, anyway. He wasn’t alone.  _ They  _ aren’t alone— they have people who care about them, now, and they don’t have to live like they only have each other anymore. 

(Some selfish part of her is scared  _ shitless  _ at the thought and she’s trying not to listen to it.)

“Besides, I…”

He looks over at her other hand, and she suddenly realizes she’s been holding something this whole time. Something round and smooth and pointedly amber when she looks down at it. 

“S-sorry. I didn’t mean… I shouldn’t have brought it up.” He looks down at their clasped hands. “I know you don’t like to talk about it.”

It’s her turn to squeeze his hand and reassure him. “It’s okay,” she says, because honestly— she’s hardly in any position to accuse anyone else of being in denial. She realizes that now. “It came with me again, didn’t it?”

“Yeah. Karen said— said that it was probably the reason you dispersed before you turned.”

Mia frowns. “I thought Yakumo…”

Oh, but she doesn’t actually remember Sif letting him use his handgun, does she?

Nicola shakes his head. “You… poofed on your own. Aurora says it was probably what happened last time, too. When you were helping Emily. I didn’t really understand everything they were talking about, but… the scans looked like the amber bead was helping your parasite heal itself.”

And that’s why it’s in her hand instead of with Sif. It kind of sucks to think that she had to give it up to help Mia— she shouldn’t have had to make that choice. Mia shouldn’t have forced her to choose.

But… maybe she can worry about that later, because Nicola still looks sorry when he doesn’t have to be. 

“Well… hey,” she says with a smile. “Maybe she really is looking out for me like you said.”

The thought  _ hurts  _ like hell but it’s… a healthier way of coping than whatever her subconscious is doing to her, so. 

Nicola looks up at her, surprised for a second before he nods. 

“I… I like to think so. Louis said that the Weeping Tree had the same kind of control over parasites as the Queen did, but in a way that…” he stumbles a bit here, like he’s trying to remember. “That maintains the— the symbiotic relationship between host and parasite.”

Mia can’t help but laugh— that sounds like Louis, alright. “So that’s why this little thing keeps telling my sucker to poof, huh?” She turns it over in her hand. “To make sure I make it through whatever’s been happening to me.”

It makes sense, in the grander scheme of things. It would be comforting— no, it  _ will  _ be comforting, once Mia gets over things a bit more. With all the awful things that have happened since the apocalypse, what more could people have wished for, really? A benevolent tree with god-like powers watching over them all— it’s almost too good to be true. 

(Almost. Almost too good, because Io gave up her life to make it a reality, and that’s its own nightmare that’s been haunting Mia.)

“Carmilla sure would’ve gotten a kick out of this if she were still around, huh?” Mia snorts. “She was always telling us about how it means nothing if we can’t get ourselves out of trouble without any help.”

She was cold and selfish and Mia’s still trying to sort out how she feels about it all, but she can’t help but be a little grateful sometimes. Some rich kids who knew nothing but a cushy life would have been eaten alive— Carmilla taught her how to fight. How to  _ survive.  _ For better or for worse, she and Nicola only made it this far because Carmilla had pushed them so hard. 

She tries not to think about how all three of them might have lived to see the world get saved if only Carmilla had been honest. 

But Nicola hasn’t said anything— Mia looks at him, a little worried that she’s the one bringing up unpleasant topics now. He didn’t exactly have a good time of it either, though Mia did try to take the brunt of it. 

He doesn’t look upset. Not in any way that she can tell— his expression is so… neutral, almost like he’s carefully holding his breath. 

“You’ve mentioned her a few times,” he says, finally. “I didn’t ask because you always sounded sad, but…”

Oh.

Mia slowly turns her head to stare up at the ceiling. Oh. That’s right. He wasn’t really there. It was just her and the clone he had left for her. It was just her and a fragment of him while he was trapped all alone in his Crypt. 

“Will you tell me about her?”

She forces a laugh. “There’s not much to tell. She’s just someone w— someone  _ I _ met a little bit after I woke up.”

“I… I want to hear about her. I couldn’t be there for you back then, and…”

She looks back at him, squeezing his hand. “Are you kidding? You took so much care of me while I didn’t even realize where you really were.” Shaking her head, she smiles. “So don’t worry about it, okay? It’s not exactly a happy story, and we don’t have to talk about it.”

Then he— he scowls, almost, like he’s frustrated— “I’m not asking you to tell me a story, Mia,” he says, almost snapping at her. “I’m asking you to  _ talk _ to me.”

And then he pulls his hands away, sitting up straight, and it feels a bit like she’s been shot. He looks so different— so distant in every way she doesn’t want him to be as he sits there, hands in his lap, eyes closed.

“Sorry,” he says, as if he has anything to apologize for. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I just… I feel like I don’t really know you.”

It’s her fault, isn’t it? Making him feel alone? She shakes her head, wishing she had the strength to sit up and hold him. “You know me better than  _ anyone,  _ Nicola.”

“I hope that’s not true.” He opens his eyes and looks at her so,  _ so  _ sadly. “Sometimes I see you when you think no one’s looking and— I can tell you’re hurting. But I don’t know why or— or what I can do to help you.” His voice wavers. “And if I’m the one who knows you best, then that means  _ no one _ knows why you’re hurting.”

Oh— please don’t cry— his face crumples and so does Mia’s chest. “It’s okay,” she pleads, reaching for his hand again. “I’m okay. You don’t have to worry about me, Nicola, it’s not that bad— I’m doing fine, I promise.”

He meets her halfway, holding her hand with the strength that she doesn’t have. “Please don’t lie to me.” He shakes his head, shoulders shaking. “I know you do it to protect me, but please— please stop trying to protect me from yourself.”

She stops breathing.

Oh.

Is that—

Is that what it looks like?

(Is that what she’s doing?)

He sniffles and wipes his eyes with the end of his sleeve, taking a deep breath. “I should go call Karen and Aurora.”

“No, wait—” she holds on to his hand, trying to stop him as he stands up— “Nicola—”

He stops, thank god— sits on the edge of the bed, actually. “I really should go. I was supposed to let them know as soon as you woke up, but Sif’s here too, and I know she can be kind of… a lot.” He smiles. “I knew you’d want a bit of time before saying hi to everyone again.”

And what had she ever done to deserve that? She thought she was doing her best to raise him on her own but none of it mattered in the end but he still figured everything out on his own. He  _ had  _ to figure everything out on his own and he still turned out so— so kind and honest and everything Mia’s still trying to be.

“Can we— can we promise to talk later, though?” He furrows his brows sadly. “I… I promise I won’t make you talk about anything you don’t want to. I just… I missed out on everything you did for the past five years, y’know?” He bunches his shoulders up plaintively. “I was hoping you could catch me up.”

He deserves at least that, doesn’t he? She’s been sitting here terrified of how fast he’s been growing up without even considering how he’d feel, meeting someone who is almost nothing like she used to be the last time he saw her. 

She nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I—” she sniffles. “I can do that.” 

He smiles, wider this time than he has today, bending down to give her the best hug he can at the slightly awkward angle— she wraps his arms around him and tries not to hold on too tightly. 

“I love you,” he says, nuzzling her lightly like he always used to, ever since he was just a little baby in her arms that were only  _ just _ strong enough to hold him.

“I love you too.” 

Patting his head once, she forces herself to let him go. He smiles and squeezes her hand again once before he stands up and leaves the room— and god, he’s nearly the same height she was when he was born. 

The door closes. She cradles the amber bead to her chest and tries not to cry. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "what does a ten year old look like/average size of a ten year old" is a real thing i typed into google so there's that
> 
> Io throughout this entire thing: Oh shit. oh fuck. oh fuck i didn't know she had it that bad for me oh no i've made a huge mistake oh nooooo
> 
> Also, can you tell this was initially supposed to be an ot3 fic with sif/mia/io? I decided that there's WAY too much trauma going on between the three of them actually so i just wanna focus on the relationship that didn't get any screentime in canon... i don't have any concrete plans to make it a polycule yet but let's see what ends up happening
> 
> edit: OH GOD also reminder the current plan is for this to turn into E rated porn eventually hope that's ok (funny thing is, i started writing this bc i was like hey what if Io came back as like a vampire queen goddess bc she realized Mia had a crush on her and was like 'actually, im gonna rail that' but... it's a whole character study on Mia now so)


	4. i was unaware that you were lighting flares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Halloween, and a group of young vampires celebrate it the only way they could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG.... i REALLY struggled with this one im not gonna lie. idk what happened but (ok fine I started progging savage content in ffxiv and that kind of ate into my time) I finally found a part time job and inbetween getting used to working again i kind of?? got super disappointed in my writing and had multiple tantrums about it lol
> 
> there's like 6000 words of scenes that i threw in the trashcan because they were absolute shit and i nearly gave up on this fic but i somehow pulled through sdfvsfd
> 
> it's still not good! im still not 100% satisfied or proud to present it but i gotta put it out there and move onto the next section or im going to lose my damn mind 
> 
> and anyway -- thank you SO much for the kind comments, i say this every chapter but this was kind of a passion project that I knew wouldn't get a lot of attention, i would have fizzled out after the first chapter if it weren't for you guys ;; w ;; 
> 
> this one's a much lighter and happier chapter than we've seen so far, i hope you enjoy

By the time Aurora’s done explaining things to her, Mia feels like she might need another two-day coma just to process everything. 

It’s… a mess, to put it lightly. On the more political side, Cerberus is scrambling to find the hole in their security that the poison slipped through— the investigation is still ongoing but it looks to be the beginning of something bigger. The elimination of the people’s most beloved hero would incite a massive reaction, after all, ranging from outrage by settlement residents and increased aggression from fringe revenant groups. Someone’s trying to rock the fragile stability they’ve established— and regardless of who or what their motives might be, it’s not going to be pretty.

On the personal side… Mia is now officially on medical house arrest at the opera house. Apparently her parasite’s just  _ barely  _ strong enough to keep her together right now, but it’s not going to make it through another dispersal or miasmic poisoning. 

“Is that why I feel so weak?” She groans, sitting up against the headboard.

Aurora nods sympathetically. “What you’re feeling is your parasite is operating at a bare minimum capacity to maintain the integrity of your cellular structure. Unfortunately, any amount of stress placed on your body would pose a significant threat to the stability of your BOR bonds— hence the need for full-time care.”

“I… see.” Mia swallows, feeling a bit nervous. “Is it— is it because I was forced to disperse?”

It isn’t technically the first time— but there’s a difference between premature dispersal after being fatally wounded and being poofed while still perfectly alive. About to lose her sentience, yes, but by physiological standards she was nowhere near death.

“Yes and no.” Aurora pushes up her glasses. “Theoretically speaking, being dispersed by mistle influence is more or less harmless— while it poses some concerns about the possibility of being dispersed against your will, all data we have indicates that it has no negative effect on your parasite. However…” she sighs, leaning forward with her elbows propped on her knees. “What we call Frenzy is actually a parasite’s emergency response to starvation or other extreme duress. Essentially, the BOR bonds in your body enter a state of panic as they try to commandeer your nervous system in order to defend itself. Being forced to dissolve while in such a state— while effective in halting the Frenzy process— would have caused severe trauma to the entire system.”

And for the first time since she was revived, Mia feels… kind of bad for her parasite. It’s so easy to think that all the consequences of being a revenant are simply a part of her as a singular identity—  _ she  _ needs blood to survive,  _ she  _ has superhuman strength and durability, and so on and so forth. But in reality, it’s… it’s all thanks to the living thing wrapped around her heart right now. Inside her chest is another creature that’s just doing its best to stay alive; in a way, they’re in this together, her and her little heart bug. 

Poor thing. She’s put it through a lot. 

“There’s no need to worry.” Aurora gives her a warm, comforting smile. “The amber bead is helping your parasite recover at an exponential rate— you should be more or less back to normal after a couple weeks of rest. Karen and I will be here at every step to make sure nothing goes wrong.”

If she would stop getting so emotional every time an adult figure in her life makes her feel cared about, that would be really nice. She knows she has enough parental issues to fill up a whole baggage cart but she really can’t go tearing up at every nice gesture. 

“Thank you,” she says, lightly worrying the surface of the amber bead as she cradles it in her lap. “I— I’m sorry to cause you so much trouble.”

“It’s no trouble at  _ all,” _ Aurora laughs emphatically, taking her glasses off to wipe them with the edge of her lab coat. “We’re happy we’re able to help.” She puts her glasses back on, smiles, and collects her tablet from the nightstand. “I’ll let you rest now— did you have any questions before I go and let Sif in?”

“Well—” it’s not any of her business, but still— “I was just wondering… where Karen was?”

It’s not that weird of a question for her to ask, is it? This is the first time Aurora was the one doing her check-up, after all— unofficially speaking, Mia was under the impression she was Nicola’s doctor and Karen was hers. 

Not that it should make any difference. Aurora smiles wryly.

“Resting, at the moment— I hope you don’t mind me taking over for her. She wore herself out over the past two days, and I only finally managed to convince her to sleep.”

“Wh—” Mia can feel her eyes almost pop out. “She didn’t _ sleep?” _

“It’s  _ nothing _ to worry about,” Aurora reassures her again. “She’s just a little too hard on herself at times. Things weren’t looking too good when you first came back to us— she didn’t want to take her eyes off your BOR cell count until you were stable.”

Which wasn’t until a few hours ago— right. Mia clasps her hands over the amber bead, grimacing. She didn’t mean to make it so hard on people. God, these two have better things to be doing, they’re so  _ busy  _ saving the world all by themselves, and— 

“Don’t feel guilty about it, okay?” Aurora rests her tablet in her lap and leans forward, giving Mia a sympathetic smile. “We both know she worries too much about everything— she just wanted to make sure you were ok. You  _ are  _ her favourite out of Louis’ friends, after all.”

Mia blinks. She— she is? 

Aurora laughs. “Is that really so surprising?” she teases. “You two have so much in common.”

The thought that  _ she  _ has anything in common with Karen Amamiya, genius, PhD at twenty-two years of age, saviour of revenantkind and more than partially responsible for the continuation of sentient life on earth, is  _ boggling.  _

“I—” she bumbles. “I mean, we both have younger brothers, but that’s about…”

“You both had younger brothers that you had to grow up too quickly to take care of in difficult environments with a lack of adequate parental figures,” Aurora lists off effortlessly, “and subsequently hold yourselves to standards that are  _ far  _ too harsh while feeling compelled to help everyone else as much as you can?”

Ok. Mia feels a little exposed.

Aurora just laughs again, shaking her head. “Listen— I know it’s hard to rely on people after being on your own for so long, but you have us in your corner now.” She leans forward, furrowing her brows emphatically. “So don’t feel guilty or afraid to ask for help, alright?”

Her eyes prickle with tears and she looks down at her hands if only to try to hide how hard she’s holding them back. A selfish, scared part of her screams that they’re only so nice to her because Nicola was a Successor, and that none of this support is earned— she clamps down on the thought. What is it going to take for her to just accept that people care about her instead of being obnoxious about it? What does it matter if she somehow earns it or not? 

(If she earns it, it is simply what she is owed— but she has no right to anything she has not earned and there is nothing stopping anyone from taking it away from her.)

Aurora spares her from having to answer, thankfully. “I’ll let Sifra see you now. Don’t forget to call us if you need anything.”

And with a smile, she does just that— Mia waits quietly as the door closes behind Aurora, then opens to one very tired looking Sif. Even filling up most of the doorframe with her stature, she looks so much smaller than usual— there’s an uncharacteristically ashen tint to her usually warm and loamy skin and Mia’s chest tightens.

Oh, Sif. Anxious, brooding, heroic Sif.

“Hey there,” she says, giving Mia a lopsided smile as she comes to take a seat. “How are you feeling?”

God, she’s so terrible at pretending. Her smile is weighed down with the effort of trying to be light and she strains to hold her shoulders at a blasé slant. 

“Not too bad.” Mia plays along anyway, if only to try and make her feel better. “Yourself?”

Sif shrugs, far too nonchalantly to be convincing at all. “I’m alright.”

“Yeah?” Mia raises a brow. “Someone tried to kill you. Anyone would be a little shaken up, I think.”

Sif gives her a slightly surprised look, as if she’d forgotten and Mia had just reminded her. “That’s…” she laughs. “That’s the least of my worries right now.”

Typical. “A coordinated assassination attempt is the least of your worries?”

“I mean, I managed to walk away intact.” She leans forward, bracing her elbows on her knees as she clasps her hands. “Could you blame me for being a little more concerned about the person who didn’t?”

And she looks up at Mia through her dark hair, offering a fractured smile— Mia tries to return it but just ends up twisting her mouth unhappily. She rolls the amber bead over a few times in her hands.

“Sorry about this,” she says, gesturing with it half-heartedly. “I think— you can probably have it back now that I’m awake—”

“No—” Sif lays her hand on Mia’s, folding the bead back into her grasp. “Keep it. Please?”

Her words are so heavy. Mia swallows thickly, pulling out one hand from underneath to lay it over Sif’s. “You’ll have it back soon, I promise.”

Sif shakes her head. “Don’t worry about it. Take as— as much time as you need.”

Yeah. As if she could bear to be parted with it for that long— Mia closes her eyes and sighs away the thought. She’s projecting. If  _ she  _ were the one Io had left it for, she would have been anxious at every second to get it back— but Sif isn’t nearly as selfish as her, so here they are.

“I know how much this means to you, Sif.” She opens her eyes to meet Sif’s. “I don’t  _ want  _ to keep it from you for longer than I have to.”

Sif pulls back to wring her hands at that, opening her mouth once and then closing it before she looks down. “I— I would  _ really  _ rather you hold onto it for now, okay? Honest.” And god, she sounds so… small and insecure. It’s not like her. “It saved you from my stupidity in the end, so…”

Mia blinks. 

“What— what are you talking about?”

Sif wrings her hands harder. Mia thinks she sees her leg shaking. “I… We would have lost you if not for it.”

Mia sighs. “You  _ have  _ to stop blaming yourself for everything. Yeah, it was a close call— but Yakumo had his gun on hand. I’m glad he  _ didn’t _ have to shoot me, but he would have, and I would’ve still been fine.”

Sif’s hair hangs over her eyes, and Mia can’t quite see her face. It’s like the nervous energy just leaves her all at once— she’s so still and darkly statuesque, sitting there with her hands gripping each other tightly.

“No,” she finally says, pretense of levity gone. “You wouldn’t have been.”

Sometimes Mia wishes she could grab Sif and shake her like a box of mints until all the anxiety and worst case scenarios fell out. “And what makes you say that?”

“Because I wasn’t going to let him shoot you.” She buries her face in her hands. “I panicked. I was ready to rip his heart out if he so much as touched you, and we would have lost you right then and there.”

Jesus. And it would be too much to hope that Sif  _ didn’t  _ sit alone with this guilt for two days, torturing herself in her own head the entire time, wouldn’t it?

“Hey.” Mia reaches for one of Sif’s hands, gently prying it away. “Look at me. Please?”

It’s from under her hair, but she still let Mia grab one of her hands so good enough.

“Jehanne Decalais,” Mia says, using the full name to make a point even though it rolls off her tongue strangely. “Had you ever held a gun in your hands before you died?”

Sif’s wary look relaxes somewhat. “N-no. I…” she snorts softly. “I’m from Canada, so I actually hadn’t even seen a real one in person until then.” 

“You’re from Canada?” Mia frowns. “Wait— don’t answer that, I had a point to make first.”

Sif smiles at that— her first genuine smile of the night— and it’s just a little contagious.

“Anyway.” Mia scoffs at herself. “My point was that you were even less prepared than I was for all of this. I know it’s easy to forget because they’re both such goofballs, but Emily and Yakumo aren’t like us— they were forced to learn how to fight when they were only teenagers.” She shakes her head. “You can’t compare yourself to them. They’re better at doing what needs to be done because they’ve been doing it for years. You and I are some randoms who happened to be in the same place when the world blew up.” And she tries for a reassuring smile, squeezing Sif’s hand. “I doubt I would’ve done much better if I’d been in your shoes.”

Sif looks unconvinced. “You would have let Yakumo help. Maybe you wouldn’t have been able to pull the trigger yourself but— but you would have been able to  _ think.” _

“Will you stop being so hard on yourself?” Mia sighs. “I don’t blame you for reacting the way you did. I don’t think anyone could.” 

“I could have gotten you _ killed, _ Mia—”

“Well, that’s kind of the fucked up thing, isn’t it?” She furrows her brows. “You had to kill me so that I wouldn’t die permanently. You had to recognize that killing me was a way to help instead of harm but you’re not  _ wired _ for that. Parasite or no, you’re still human up  _ here,” _ she says, poking Sif in the forehead. “And that’s not going to change anytime soon. Not for you, not for any of us— not even Emily or Yakumo. They’re just better at overriding panic responses.”

Sif stares at her, unsure— but the  _ anger  _ is gone and Mia’s certain she’s getting through to her, even if only a little bit. She lets go of Sif’s hand to lightly grasp her chin between her thumb and index, tilting her face up.

“So stop blaming yourself for everything, okay?” She says softly, looking straight into Sif’s dark eyes. “Irony notwithstanding, we’re only human.” She gently brushes her thumb over Sif’s skin. “And I forgive you.”

And Sif— she looks… lost, in that way she does sometimes but she’s very much  _ here  _ and looking at Mia, not a thousand miles away in her own anxieties. Her eyes flicker between Mia’s, as if she’s seeing something… well, that’s  _ something. _ Mia’s not sure. She pulls her hand away, cradling the amber bead again.

“I’m going to get this back to you as soon as I can,” she insists. “Just give me a bit of time.”

And the strange look finally clears from Sif’s eyes— she shakes her head, frowning. “I meant what I said. You can keep it for as long as you want to. Take your time.”

Mia sighs. “It wouldn’t be right. You know that.”

“I don’t, actually.” She laces her hands together again. “What makes you say so?”

Isn’t it obvious? Mia holds her poker face as she turns the bead over in her hands. “She left it for you, not me.” And she’s actually rather impressed with how cleanly that comes out of her mouth, without any bitterness or jealousy. “It would be… kind of disrespectful for me to keep it from you, you know?”

Selfish, too, but she doesn’t really want to get into it right now. She smiles at Sif but doesn’t get it back— Sif just stares at her a little sadly.

“I’m not so sure about that,” she says. 

“What’s there to be unsure about?” Mia scoffs. “The last thing she said was for you. It fell into  _ your _ hands.” 

And that’s just one step too far into accusatory, so Mia reins it back, closing her eyes. She has to breathe. It’s not Sif’s fault. It’s not anyone’s fault but her own.

“There wasn’t a lot of time to say goodbye that day, was there?” Sif asks softly. “Everything happened so fast, and there was so much at stake, and… and I’ve just been thinking.”

“About what?”

“About how much she loved you.” (Mia holds her breath—) “How much she loved all of you—” (and she lets it go.) “You were her home. She might not have had a lot of time to say goodbye the way she wanted to, but… the more I think about it, the more certain I am that she wanted to leave a part of herself for  _ us,  _ not just me.”

Wishful thinking, isn’t it? But if anyone has the right to it, it’s Sif. 

“Besides,” she continues. “This is the second time it’s gone from me to you. I think I can take a hint.” She smiles, her dimples pushing in unabashedly. “It’s done a hell of a lot better at taking care of you than I have, anyway.”

And Mia does her best to bite down on her frustration because Sif doesn’t know. She doesn’t know how much that hurts to hear, how jagged the irony feels in her chest like it’s tearing up her insides— 

For the second time tonight, she feels awful for her parasite. Poor fucking thing. Of all the corpses in the world it could have been stuck with, it had to be Mia, didn’t it? It’s been with her for almost six years now, doing its best to put her back together through all the times she’s gone and gotten herself torn apart. Desperately trying to keep her heart beating no matter how many times she goes and gets it broken. 

Sif reaches over to tuck some of her hair behind her ear and it takes everything inside her not to flinch. 

“I should let you rest. It’s getting late.”

Mia scoffs. “I slept for two days.”

“That doesn’t really count as rest, does it?” Sif laughs. “You’re probably exhausted from trying to stay alive.” She gets up from her seat. “I’ll come bother you again tomorrow.”

“Interesting way to reassure your sick friend.” Mia snorts. She rolls the amber bead between her hands a few times. “Are you patrolling tonight?”

“Five am shift, as usual. Why?”

“Nothing.” She frowns. “Just… stay safe, okay?” 

Sif smiles at her warmly. “You know I always do.”

“I mean it. I know you’re not worried about the people trying to kill you but I am.” It comes out a lot harsher than she meant it. Goddammit. “Just…” She sighs. “Just promise me you’ll be careful. More than usual.”

And then Sif leans down, putting a hand just behind her ear before kissing the top of her head.

“I promise,” she says, so, so tenderly. “Get some rest, okay?”

Mia stares down at the bead. “Okay.” 

And then Sif leaves, and Mia rolls sideways off her backrest of pillows, curling up into herself against the wall. 

What a terrible thing, to be cared about. 

* * *

“I hate you people so much.”

Rin laughs. “What, just because we’re making you wear a pirate hat?”

“No.” Mia takes a deep breath. “Us being immortal as we are, needing to wear an eyepatch is a rare enough occurrence that I would have suffered the indignity of being mocked for it, if only for the novelty,” she says in a formal, eloquent tone. “No. The issue is that it is the thirty-first of October, sixteen years after the end of the civilization, where we have all been turned into literal bloodsucking creatures of the night, and you all have decided to visit me, on my literal sickbed, in  _ shitty vampire costumes.” _

“Hey,” Yakumo says around a mouthful of plastic fangs. “Watch your language around the kiddo.”

She’s about to give him an earful of the aforementioned  _ language,  _ but Nicola gives her an apologetic look from where he’s sitting at the foot of the bed and she promptly shuts up. 

“I dressed up as a werewolf,” he offers plaintively. “Aurora helped me make the ears.” 

They’re surprisingly detailed for a last-minute handicraft in the post apocalypse— two masterfully needled felt ears sewn onto a headband. It’s the only real costume piece he has other than a pair of raggedy brown gloves but it’s still so much better than all the polyester capes and faux-gothic shirts in this room combined.

“Nicola. Light of my life. You are the only person I respect in this room.”

“Oh, lighten up,” Rin heckles her, tossing a piece of— whatever it is that she’s snacking on at Mia. “It’s funny!” 

“It’s mind-bogglingly  _ stupid  _ is what it is— is this candy corn?” Mia stares at the tiny monstrosity in horror. “Where the f— heck did you get  _ candy corn?” _

Rin shoves a handful into her mouth and Mia tries not to gag. “Coco found em!”

Mia doesn’t want to know from where or how. “Disgusting.” She pelts it back at Rin’s face. “Keep your trash to yourself, thank you.”

“See!” Emily smiles triumphantly from her perch on Mia’s desk. “Even Mia thinks candy corn is gross.” 

Louis frowns at her petulantly. “I hardly think one extra person qualifies as a definitive metric on whether or not something is considered universally unpalatable.” He crosses his arms over his tacky red and black gothic vest. “At the very least, there’s two people in this room who disagree.”

“Yeah, but that’s, what, five against two now,” Yakumo gloats, sitting on the floor against the leg of the desk. 

“Four. Sif is undecided,” Louis reminds them, and Sif immediately throws up her hands in surrender. 

“Don’t look at me. I don’t want to get involved.”

And of course this asshole still looks hot in a cheap costume. The ridiculously flared collar of the fake cape somehow looks half-convincing on her and Mia just wants to kick her off her stool. 

“Great. Now I’m being subjected to candy corn discourse by the  _ clowns  _ infesting my room.” She curls up into herself, thunking her forehead against her knees. The plastic bicorne falls off her head and rolls pitifully onto the duvet. “Someone put me out of my misery.” 

“Oh, come on,” Yakumo says. “Candy corn discourse and clowning around is the  _ spirit  _ of Halloween. The only thing missing is a bunch of kids in costumes ringing the doorbell.”

“It’s too bad.” Emily sighs, smiling ruefully at Nicola. “You two must miss trick-or-treating, huh?”

There’s a hint of wistfulness in Emily’s tone that squeezes at Mia’s chest. She complains about her own childhood so much, it’s easy to forget that Emily and Yakumo didn’t get to have one at all.

“I wasn’t allowed to go trick-or-treating, actually,” Nicola says plainly. “I got sick really easily, so our parents didn’t want me going out at night in the cold.”

“Oh.” Rin screws up her face sympathetically. “That sucks, I’m sorry.”

He shrugs. “It’s okay. Mia always stayed home to watch Halloween movies with me, so I still had a lot of fun.”

Then everyone’s attention turns to her in a weirdly affectionate sort of way and she just ducks her head to run her fingers through her hair. 

“That was really nice of you.” 

And of  _ course  _ it’s Sif leaning towards her with the tender comment. Mia scoffs. “It was the bare minimum. What was I gonna do, leave him at home?” 

Sif snorts. “Still.”

Still  _ what?  _ Mia almost argues aloud before she just rolls her eyes and looks away. Yeah, she knows she’s kind of being a grouch. Whatever. She’s  _ ill.  _ Like, on bed rest for the past three days ill. She’s allowed.

“I  _ did  _ get to go trick or treating at least once, though,” Nicola continues. “The last year before everything blew up, actually.”

“Joint leverage against your parents?” Louis asks fondly, almost like he’s nostalgic— Mia struggles to imagine him and Karen getting up to any trouble, but then again, who knows? Both of them have a surprisingly mischievous streak at times. 

“Nah. Our parents were never home, and our caretaker never listened to us anyway,” he says with a laugh. “I said I was going to sleep early because I was tired, and Mia pretended she was going to a halloween party with some new friends from college.”

Emily’s eyes widen. “No way. You snuck out.”

Nicola nods proudly. “Mia drove around to the back of the house so she could help me down from my window. She even taught herself a little bit of parkour so she could take down our climbing rope before our caretaker found it and then put it back up when we got back.” 

Okay, at this point he’s just— flat-out  _ bragging _ about her. “It wasn’t that big of a deal.” She wrings her hands. “Our house was on a hillside, so the window was only a floor and a half at most from the back yard.” 

Nicola gives her this exasperated look, but thankfully doesn’t mention anything about the admittedly excessive safety gear or the walkie-talkie and code names. 

(Yeah. She made it kind of a cheesy breakout plan so it’d be fun for him instead of nervewracking. They dressed up like spies and everything. He was seven, okay?)

“You get modest about the weirdest things, you know that?” Yakumo laughs at her. “Come on, take credit where it’s due. You were kind of a badass sister, huh?”

“That’s— an exaggeration,” she blurts out. The way everyone’s looking at her is just so  _ unbearably  _ warm and the back of her neck feels kind of feverish.

“What about you and Karen?” Sif asks, turning to Louis. “Any Halloween stories from the illustrious Amamiya siblings?”

(Mia nearly sighs audibly in relief. Sif reaches over to grab her hand, glancing at her once before looking at Louis expectantly. Mia twines their fingers together and squeezes, grateful for the redirection.)

“Well,” Louis tilts his head. “Nothing so eventful. We had a pretty normal life when we lived in Japan— Karen’s friends didn’t mind me tagging along, thankfully, so I got to go with her for most holiday celebrations.”

Then their father died, and… well. Mia tries to think of another redirection on Louis’ behalf so he doesn’t have to retread the unhappy story— but he just crosses his arms thoughtfully and continues. 

“We moved to stay with our aunt in America after our father passed away, and… she wasn’t the most nurturing person, as most of you know. She didn’t let us go trick-or-treating, so we usually spent the evening sitting on the front porch with candy and people-watching.”

He seems so… nonchalant about it, like it really doesn’t sting to think about. Maybe it doesn’t. He’s had longer to get used to it than Mia did, after all. 

“That’s too bad, though,” Yakumo says sympathetically. 

(As if he didn’t have it worse. And, wow— all of them have their own soap boxes to sort through when it comes to family, huh? Sif and Rin’s undisclosed history notwithstanding, Mia wonders if they could even scrape together one functional childhood between the lot of them.)

Louis shrugs. “I enjoyed it, actually. She was always so busy studying and working back then, it was one of the few times we got to spend time together. And— like Nicola,” he mentions, smiling a bit, “I had a pretty fun Halloween the year before everything happened. I think it was the first time I spent the holiday with my own friends instead of Karen’s.”

Rin grins and elbows him, waggling her eyebrows. “Rowdy freshman college party, huh?”

He rolls his eyes, still smiling. “Something like that.”

“Hey, actually…” Emily frowns. “Didn’t you guys go to the same school?”

“Oh.” Mia blinks. “Did we?”

“Yeah— you both started at Columbia in the same year too, I think.”

Louis raises a brow at her. “2049 fall semester?”

“Oh wow.” Mia blinks a few times more, trying to process. “Yeah, we were in the same year.”

Jesus. Louis, who is now older than her, used to be the same age. It’s a lot to try and wrap her head around.

(in a way, they’re just a tableau of mismatched moments, a collection of frozen pieces that should have long since passed each other by.)

“I’m surprised we never ran into each other,” Louis says. “I was pretty involved with the freshman outreach events all semester, I thought I’d met almost everyone in our year at least once.”

“Well, considering I skipped out on anything that wasn’t mandatory…” Mia laughs sheepishly. Wow, it feels like it was forever ago. “I— I didn’t get out much back then.”

Sif snorts. “All the times you called Louis a nerd, and it turns out  _ you  _ were the recluse and he was the party boy?”

“I was  _ not  _ a party boy,” Louis protests. “I just volunteered for things.”

“Did these ‘things’ involve parties?” Yakumo crosses his arms with a smirk. 

Louis just sighs at him. “Often, yes.” 

“Oh, be nice,” Mia calls over the laughter. “You know he was probably just trying to help.” An overeager and nice pre-med student sounds about pretty on target for Louis, anyway. “Also, I wasn’t a recluse, thank you, I was just busy.”

Rin snorts. “Come on, it was your first year. Isn’t that when you’re supposed to let loose and make new friends and stuff?”

“I was in a really intense program, so I didn’t have a lot of time for parties or events.” She shrugs, fiddling with the end of her hair. “And I wasn’t exactly the most social person, so. I spent most of my downtime at the park nearby or in the arts building basement.”

Louis frowns at her. “Why the arts building basement? It was so…”

“Claustrophobic and dark?” Mia laughs. “That’s kind of why, I guess. You remember how there were a bunch of abandoned rooms at the end of almost blocked off hallways?” 

Louis nods with a sort of grimace-laugh. “And unfinished construction that hadn’t been touched in twenty years or so, yes.” 

“Wasn’t Columbia supposed to be prestigious?” Sif raises a brow, and Mia shakes her head.

“The more prestigious the university, the shittier their arts funding is. Anyway, I poked into one of those rooms out of curiosity once. Turns out it was an abandoned music room with a piano that still worked, so… sometimes I’d go down there to play and unwind before I drove home.” She runs a hand through her hair, cringing a little. “And that sounds a lot more pathetic out loud than it did in my head.”

“It’s  _ not  _ pathetic,” Yakumo scoffs, rolling his eyes. “But you really gotta play for us sometime, you know.”

Maybe one day. “If you make it worth my while, sure.”

“Wait.” And when Mia looks over at Louis, he’s staring at her like she’s suddenly turned purple or something. “That was you?”

She blinks at him. “You’re… going to have to be more specific.”

“There was a rumor going around that you could hear someone playing the piano in the basement of that building at odd hours. No one could find where it was coming from, though so— so people started saying it was a ghost. There were even a few stories going around about who died there and why.” 

And Mia just… stares. “You’re kidding.” 

“Wow,” Nicola says softly. “You were an urban legend?”

“Don’t—” Mia coughs. “Oh my god, please don’t say that like you’re  _ proud _ of me?”

He just  _ shrugs  _ at her helplessly, completely bemused. “What? It’s kind of cool.”

And he is so sweet and she loves him dearly but ‘cool’ is  _ not  _ the word she would be using to describe this situation—

“Okay, but you can’t just say that and not tell us what these stories were,” Rin cackles. “Spill.”

“Or you could not,” Mia suggests with a thinly facetious smile. “And let me be mortified in peace? Please?”

“Again, you get embarrassed about the weirdest things,” Yakumo laughs. “What’s so mortifying about this?”

Well, for starters, the fact that she played under the impression that no one could hear her, doing whatever the hell she wanted with the randomest pieces?? The fact that she sometimes  _ sang  _ too? And that she does  _ not  _ want to hear any details about what she might have sounded like or what people might’ve thought?

“Come on, Louis, tell us,” Rin laughs. “It’s Halloween! We’re all dressed up for ghost stories.”

Mia stares at Louis, hands pressed flat against each other in front of her mouth, giving him the clearest silent plea for help that she can manage. He, for his part, looks a bit put on the spot— glancing between her and everyone else’s expectant smiles. 

“I think,” he says, pulling out his pocketwatch. “It’s the end of visiting hours, actually.”

Oh thank god. Mia could kiss him, if she were so inclined.

“Boo. You’re not even her doctor.”

He stands up as he gives Rin a stern look. “Karen entrusted me with her patient’s care as a doctor, not as my sister,” he says, taking the lamp from Mia’s desk before walking over towards her. “I may not have been able to finish my schooling, but I intend to take this responsibility as seriously as any other physician would.” He places the lamp and his watch on the nightstand before he straightens up. “Now, out, all of you.”

“Yessir,” Emily chirps good-naturedly, pulling Yakumo along. “Bye, Mia!”

“Rest up, alright?” 

Mia gives him a dry little salute as he walks off with Emily, only to find herself accosted by Rin.

“M-wah!” Rin smacks a kiss right on her face even as she grunts and swats at her. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t die.”

_ “Thanks.”  _ Mia rolls her eyes as she prances away. Lovely reminder that she’s still marginally at risk of disintegrating in her sleep. Sif, for her part, just squeezes her hand and gives her a smile before rising from her seat and heading for the door, thankfully. 

“I should go too,” Nicola says, starting to shuffle off the bed. 

Louis frowns. “You know you’re exempt from visiting hour rules now, right?”

“Yeah— but I have another lesson with Jack and Eva tomorrow morning, so I wanted to get to bed early.” 

“Hey, hold on—” She reaches out and catches his sleeve, tugging lightly. “Gimme a hug before you go?”

He grins as he obliges, scooting up and wrapping his arms around her— it’s a bit awkward because his limbs are starting to get a little too gangly for the rest of him, and… jeez. It’s not gonna be much longer before he’s too big to pick up. 

“Love you.” She squeezes him once before letting him go with a pat. 

“You too.” He crawls off the bed, then, and walks over to where Sif is holding the door open for him— Mia watches her put her hand on top of his head before they walk off together. It’s kinda cute. Her two personal knights in shining armor. She could get used to it. 

(If she were so inclined.)

“Sorry about putting you on the spot.”

Mia looks up to find Louis grimacing at her slightly sheepishly. She laughs and shakes her head.

“It’s fine, you didn’t mean to.” He never means anything but well-wishes for most other people, really— it’s hard to fault him. She picks up the plastic pirate hat sitting by her legs and waves it at him. “Can you do me a favor and put this where I never have to see it again?”

He snorts. “Aye aye, captain.”

“Oh—” she laughs as she swats him with it once before tossing it at him. “Shut up, you.”

He smiles and gives her a teasing salute as he walks off, and she rolls her eyes. Dork. Just like the rest of them.

(It was really nice that they came to see her tonight. It’s  _ been _ really nice that they’ve been coming to see her nearly every day, piling into her tiny backstage room to keep her company.)

A short ‘mrrp’ comes from underneath the bed before Bram wiggles out, clambering clumsily onto the sheets with his gangly kitten legs as Mia laughs.

“Hey, buddy.” She grins when he meows back at her. “Were you under there the whole time?”

Another plaintive meow. He paws his way onto her stomach before sniffing at her face— she holds still, only grimacing when he finishes sniffing and smashes his head against her chin. 

“Yes, you’re very cute—” she sputters when he turns around and shoves his fluffy tail against her face. “Thanks.” 

“Mrrp.” He claws onto her shoulder before using it as a jumping pad to get up onto the top of the headboard— she winces, but only rolls her eyes and sits back to watch him as he goes about investigating the room. 

“Having fun?”

“Brrm.”

“Okay.”

Cute little bugger. Sure, it’s kind of over the top that Karen and Aurora adopted a black cat and named it Bram, of all things— but what isn’t, these days? They live in a run down cathedral and a broken up opera house and it’s all kind of one big running joke at this point. It’s almost going on sixteen years past the end of the world, and they might as well have what little fun they can.

(She still thinks the vampire costumes are stupid. They could have at least put some effort into it.)

A small clink, and when she looks over at the nightstand Bram is swatting at Louis’ pocketwatch— 

“No don’t—” He flinches, spooked, knocks the watch clean off the surface in his scramble to jump away, and it  _ explodes  _ into pieces on the floor.

_ “Shit.”  _

Launching herself out of the bed, she starts collecting the pieces— god fucking dammit, the little springs and cogs are  _ everywhere  _ and—

“Mia?” Louis calls from down the hallway. “Is everything okay?”

“Y— no, I—” she hisses as the uncooperative little fuckers start slipping out of her hands. She grabs one of the upended shells of the watch, about to pile the pieces in when she notices a photograph with its corners tucked into the metal.

It’s not her. It’s not her, because she shared Karen’s snowy skin tone while the girl in the photo is painted a warm sunset brown with long hair pulled back in a messy ponytail as she smiles unabashedly into the camera. It’s not her, because her irises were a molten shade of gold and this girl has deep brown eyes glinting almost amber in the bright sunlight of what looks like a park behind her and—

“It’s one of the nicer photos of her that I have left.”

Mia nearly drops the lid, frantically trying to decide if she should just— drop the photo or give it back to Louis or  _ something.  _ “I’m sorry— Bram knocked your watch off the table, and I—”

“It’s  _ okay.” _ Louis steps closer and crouches down as well, starting to gather some of the pieces. “I knew I was going to need a replacement soon. Don’t worry about it.”

“I—” she looks at the photo again, and she knows she shouldn’t be seeing it at all because it’s Louis’ private possession but she  _ can’t  _ look away because she recognizes the happy crinkle at the edges of those eyes and she’s never seen this smile on anyone else and it’s— it’s—

“It must be strange,” Louis says softly as he picks up the tiny cogs. “Seeing her like that.”

“I…” Mia swallows harshly. “I’ve— I’ve never seen her look so…”

She doesn’t quite have the word for it, because every picture of Cruz Silva that she had ever seen were of her in that grim hospital gown with all the barely hidden scars and tubes and wires coiled around her. Mostly with a blank background behind her, like she was posing for an identification photo— which, she was, essentially. Just photos for her medical records. 

(Or pictures of the Queen, captured somehow in the chaos of a battlefield. Lifeless. Terrible. The very personification of death.)

“She looks like just another person.” Louis smiles sadly. “Sometimes it’s so easy to forget that she was.”

And that small admission wraps itself around Mia’s throat and  _ crushes.  _ She was. Before she was Cruz Silva, subject zero, saviour of humanity and then the Queen of death— before any of that, she was just another girl. 

Oh, god. She was the same age as Mia, too, when the world ended. Only eighteen. Only eighteen, when they died.

(When Mia was killed, and Cruz  _ volunteered  _ her life for everyone else’s sake.)

“It’s a shame you never got to meet her. She drove herself crazy trying to find you, you know.”

“Wh—” Mia blinks rapidly at him. “Me?”

“Yeah.” He smiles. “Swore up and down that she’d find the ghost of the arts basement once and for all. She staked out the building whenever she got the chance to, between classes.”

Oh jesus fucking christ— Cruz Silva, of all people, had— heard her, known of her, back then. 

“She could never let go of mysteries like that. She loved solving them too much— it was one of the things I admired about her the most. She wanted to understand the world. She wanted to understand  _ people.  _ She majored in history and took an elective in nearly every cultural studies course because she wanted to understand what had made people what they were and how we had gotten to be at that point of civilization and…”

He drifts off, and when Mia looks at him she can’t imagine how much he must miss her. He stares down at the metal pieces in his hands, rolling one between his fingers, the lingering silhouette of a smile on his face.

“Sorry.” He starts gathering again. “I don’t get to talk about her often. Not many people remember her all that fondly.”

Which is so fucking— stupid, because Cruz Silva gave everything to try and save everyone and it wasn’t her fault that she turned into  _ that.  _

Mia puts the photo down before gently placing her hand on Louis’. “I’m… I’m sorry.”

What a paltry sentiment. It’s all she can offer. 

“Thank you.” He smiles at her warmly. “I know I’m a little late in the grieving process, all things considered, but…”

She tightens her grip on his hand. “No one gets to decide that but you.”

And then he puts the pieces down in a small pile, resting his other hand on hers as his smile turns grateful but wry. “I know. I suppose I just… regret that it took me this long. I spent all my years after waking up trying not to feel anything.” He furrows his brows. “So much so that I didn’t recognize Karen  _ or  _ Cruz when I met Io.”

Mia doesn’t know what to say because— she could relate, maybe, but it’s not the same, is it? Io was his friend too. To lose over and over like that— Cruz, Karen, then Io— it’s more than she would have been able to take, she thinks. 

“I should have been tipped off when she started tearing through every book we could find,” he laughs. “Cruz was the same. She wanted to know everything and anything and she was such a fast reader it scared me sometimes.” 

That hurts a bit, actually— the fact that she can picture a little more of someone she’s never met so clearly because he said that. She looks down at the photo again, and the bright-eyed curiosity and  _ love  _ for the world that Mia remembers fits so perfectly around Cruz’s smile.

Mia bites back the tears prickling at her eyes. Not now. This isn’t about her right now. But when she looks up, Louis is giving her the most unbearably sympathetic look and she tries not to scowl. 

“It’s a hard lesson to learn,” he says quietly. “But it’s better late than never. You have to let yourself feel.” He reaches out to hold her hand, squeezing it gently. “You have to let yourself hurt, or you’ll never be able to let it go.”

She swallows, looking down at the broken watch on the floor. 

“And please remember that I’m here if you want to talk, okay?” 

Mia nods clumsily. “Y-yeah.” She looks up at him. “Same to you.”

It sounds so trite, when she says it like that, like she’s just trying to offer a formality as an afterthought— but he smiles warmly anyway.

“I appreciate it.” He gathers all the pieces, then, taking Mia’s handful from her before clasping it all between the two metal halves. “I’ll let you get some rest. Karen will have my head if she hears I kept you up.” 

“Okay.” She listlessly acquiesces as he helps her to her feet with his free hand. “Sorry. About your watch.” 

“It wasn’t your fault, don’t worry about it.” He wrinkles his nose at where Bram is peeking out from underneath the desk again. “I’ll have a talk with my sister about Bram’s behaviour later.” 

“Brrp.”

With that, and a pat on her shoulder, he leaves. She stands there for a moment as Bram pads over to bump into her ankles, peering up at her inquisitively— she picks him up slowly, giving him ample time to run away before she lifts him and cradles him in her arms to press a little kiss to the top of his head. 

“Troublemaker,” she accuses as she lets him hop down onto the bed. He only blinks at her slowly before stalking over to the foot of the bed to curl up. She follows his stead, reaching under her pillow to grab the amber bead before she pulls it down from the headboard to lie flat against the mattress. Then she lies down, reaches over to turn the lamp off, pulls the covers over herself and lets the silence and darkness settle in. 

The amber bead is cool and smooth in her hands. And Mia tries to wrap her head around the fact that she and Cruz Silva were the same age, same year, students at the same university— they might have even known each other, had the world ended a few months later. Cruz Silva was looking for her. Cruz Silva wanted to find her.

She pictures the photo again, wishing she had— had maybe looked at it more, memorized it somehow. The smile. The lovely creases in her eyelids, the collar of a jean jacket and striped shirt, the  _ mundanity.  _

And it finally strikes her, in retrospect, why the scene had been so achingly familiar— the building in the background was the old engineering building, and Cruz Silva had been standing on the very street that she had walked across on her way to class. Undoubtedly, inarguably, they had existed in the same place at differing points in time— maybe even the same, rendered invisible to one another by indifference. Cruz Silva had walked upon the same old gravel, looked at the old pockmarks on the brutalist building just to the side that always looked like a disfigured face— 

And Mia can’t help but desperately wonder what she might have been like. Louis said that Io had gotten her curiosity and love for the world from Cruz— what else, what else? Did she fall asleep the same— slowly yet suddenly, like a feather falling through the air out of nowhere? Did she have the same dignified, slightest crease between her brows when she was angry? Did she laugh the same, like windchimes twinkling above the turning of an old book’s page, did she look as unreachable and regal when lost in thought?

Would Cruz have liked her, if they had met? Would— would Io have known her, then? 

She turns over onto her side, sighing. Stupid questions. She hadn’t even recognized Louis, someone Cruz cared about dearly, why in the world would she have known some girl she might have met just a little bit before the world ended? 

And still, it’s hard to stop herself from wishing and hoping. Maybe things could have been different. Maybe, if— if Mia had realized how she felt sooner, if Io had just a bit more reason to care about her, then…

Then she would still be dead and gone, and nothing would have changed. Mia closes her eyes. 

* * *

When she opens them again, the first thing she thinks is that Io looks bright and soft and  _ so  _ out of place in the narrow, dank hallway. Mia laughs, crossing her arms as she leans back against some of the old lockers. 

Figures. These dream settings are nothing if not predictable. 

“Wow. This is even more claustrophobic than I remember.”

Io says nothing at first, just staring with those golden eyes— her lashes flutter as she seems to study the panes of Mia’s face, hands clasped in front of her dress. 

“She would have.”

Mia blinks. “What?”

“Cruz.” She steps forward to tuck some of Mia’s hair behind her ear. “She would have liked you, if you had met.”

Ah. Mia sighs, kicking her feet idly against the old linoleum floor. “Is that what you’re so glum about?” she asks, tucking her chin and smiling at Io from beneath her bangs. “It’s okay. I know it’s just wishful thinking.” She uncrosses her arms and folds them behind herself, between her back and the lockers. “It doesn’t really matter, anyway.” 

“How so?”

Mia shrugs. “I’m only thinking about her because I’m thinking about you.” She tilts her head. “And… you  _ did  _ like me. Not the way I liked you, but still.” 

Io’s hand lingers against the curve of Mia’s jaw, her thumb brushing the side of her cheek. “I did. Very much.”

Self-flattery. Mia closes her eyes and clamps down on the self-loathing. What’s the point? If she’s going to have these awful lucid dreams about her dead crush anyway, maybe she should just… take Louis’ advice. 

“What brings you here?” she asks in a half-heartedly flirting tone. “I’m not dead. At least, I don’t think.”

Io just starts to lightly play with her hair, her thumb brushing against the outside of her ear. “You called for me.”

How vague. Mia supposes she’s not wrong— falling asleep while desperately missing someone is probably enough fodder for an overactive subconscious. She sighs, leaning into the touch. 

“I guess it  _ is  _ kind of funny that people thought I was a ghost.” She smiles, and when the edge of her mouth touches Io’s palm she has to clamp down on the urge to turn her face and press a kiss there. “I found the piano room while looking for a private place to cry. Coming down here to unwind and play when my courseload got to be a bit much was the only thing keeping me from driving into the river.” 

Io’s breath hitches as her hand goes tense— and when Mia opens her eyes, she looks like she’s just been struck. 

“Sorry.” She reaches up to hold Io’s hand, threading their fingers together. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry. I was just joking.” 

Io just brings up her other hand to cradle Mia’s face. “Were you?”

And her voice is so alarmingly brittle— Mia opens her mouth to reassure her but doesn’t actually hear herself say anything. She should say yes. She should tell Io that it was just a joke she shouldn’t have made and that she never means anything by it. It’s the kinder thing to do. 

“I…” she looks away, tucking her chin down to hide behind her hair. “I don’t know. I mean, I— I know I never would have. I couldn’t leave Nicola alone like that. But… I’ve always thought about it, one way or another. I guess that’s not exactly normal.”

Well. She doesn’t have to guess. She knows it’s not normal— it’s rather concerning, actually, but considering that she was born to rich parents and never had any real, material problems, how could she complain? 

When she looks up at Io again, she still looks so  _ worried.  _

“Hey, it’s okay,” Mia tries. “I’m fine. I was never going to do anything, really. It’s just… always been in the back of my mind, but it was never serious. I promise.”

But that only seems to make it worse— Mia can see her jaw tensing. Golden eyes flit over her face, searching for any signs of— of pain, or cracks in a facade, Mia thinks. 

“You don’t have to look at me like that,” she says quietly. 

Io’s hands go slightly slack, her face softening into something a bit less anguished and a bit more surprised. 

“I…” Her brows furrow. “What do you mean?”

“You’re looking at me like you’re trying to see past me putting up a brave face. You don’t have to.” Mia smiles wryly. “I’ve never been able to lie to you.”

_ “I mean, it was sort of irritating that it was lauded as a book on cultural theory, you know?” You shrug, sinking down until your chin is tickling the surface of the water. “People say that it’s such a poignant study on the nature of photography, but in all honesty I found his tone kind of… condescending. You could tell that he was a white dude who didn’t know a thing about photography— the way he talked about technique and framing as if it were all just an afterthought is so… I don’t know. It’s one thing to write a thesis on your personal relationship to images, it’s another to dismiss an entire creative discipline.” _

_ She frowns lightly, inquisitively as she looks over at you. “And yet… you say that you liked the book?” _

_ You laugh. You did. For all its faults, it’s still one of the only books you bought in college and kept afterwards. _

_ “If you put all his… arrogance aside, it does touch on a lot of good points. I liked the second half of the book more than the first— he sounds a lot more honest in the fact that he wrote it to cope with his mother’s death more than to say something definitive about photography as a cultural phenomenon. He talks about how he went looking for his mother in old photographs after she passed, and the fact that he could only ‘almost’ recognize her in them hurt more than if he couldn’t recognize her at all. And— that was what really scared and fascinated him about photos— the fact that it’s a snapshot of what has been, that’s never able to capture the living, imprecise nature of the way we remember the people we love.”  _

_ You gesture emphatically as you talk, trying to sort your words as you work through them. “There’s this one phrase that I really loved, I still remember— he talks about the ‘impossible science of the unique being.’ I’m probably not remembering the context perfectly but it’s just always stuck with me, you know? The fact that people always try to identify themselves through one framework or another, engaging in the futile and impossible work to try and know one’s self and others— because it’s even more impossible to try and fit into life without trying to examine ‘identity’ at all— and the fact that this is what we look for when we look at photos of people, especially if they’re of someone we can’t meet anymore, because we’re always longing to understand and to recognize the beings that we love, and…” _

_ Christ, how long have you been talking? You let your hands drop to the water, feeling a little— well, embarrassed, obviously. No one wants to spend their night listening to you ranting and raving about things that don’t even matter anymore anyway. _

_ “What is it?” _

_ She looks so concerned, staring at you with her head resting in her arms. You laugh. _

_ “Nothing. Sorry.” You lean back onto the rocks, watching the steam from the hot springs rise up into the night sky. “I didn’t mean to start going on and on about boring stuff.” _

_ “It wasn’t boring,” she says plainly. You just smile at her haplessly because she sounds so honest.  _

_ “Thank you for humoring me.” You stretch your legs out, letting your hands rest in your lap underneath the surface of water.  _

_ But Io only frowns a bit more, and it makes her cheek squish up against her arm just the tiniest bit. It’s cute. “I’m not humoring you. I like it when you talk about things you’re passionate about. You speak in such an authoritative and eloquent manner, and you always have an interesting perspective.” _

_ So open. So earnest. And still, you look away. “You’re too nice to me, you know that?” _

_ You punctuate it carefully with an appreciative laugh, but it does nothing to stall the sudden, heavy quiet that settles upon you through the steam.  _

_ “No,” you hear her say. “I don’t think I do.” _

_ And that’s enough to make you start wringing your hands. She’s so soft. She’s so gentle with you, and it makes your chest flutter so warmly it almost scares you.  _

_ “Why do you do that?” _

_ She says it so quietly, so tenderly, but you hear it like a shock to your system. “Do what?” _

_ When you look at her, finally, she’s still staring, as if contemplating on how to phrase what she wants to say. You almost feel like inviting her to just— say it however she likes, because in all honesty there’s almost nothing she could say to really offend you and you’d rather know the full truth of what she thinks of you, anyhow. _

_ “I… admire you very much. You seem so confident and self-assured, and I aspire to be as composed as you are in difficult situations. But sometimes, you… you’re so unkind to yourself. You speak as if I only spend time with you because I am nice, and not because I enjoy your company,” she says, almost sadly. “Why is that?” _

_ There’s a part of you that prepares to make a joke out of your disbelief, to tease her for going so far as to admire someone like you. You let the knee-jerk reaction flare and then fade without voicing it, because you don’t want to. Not to her.  _

_ “I…” You look down at your hands. “I’m good at coming off as confident. I kind of had to be, I guess— my parents were both relatively… important people with images to maintain. I had to at least look like the daughter people expected them to have, at least in public. And— and that was before I had to learn how to use a weapon and take care of myself.”  _

_ It frightens you, how easily you give up any and every answer she asks of you.  _

_ “But when it really comes down to it…” You sigh. “Nicola’s right. I bend over backwards to seem dependable because I’m not exactly a strong person. I’ve always been awkward, and shy and— and I hate that I usually come off as kind of cold and standoffish because the truth is that I get lonely really easily.” _

_ And you’ve never admitted that to anyone, have you? You’ve never felt like you could— you were always too afraid that admitting to weakness would make you more prone to it, less able to deny your own nature.  _

_ But when you look for something to be scared of in the way she looks at you, it’s not there. Just warmth. Just willingness, just the terrifyingly new feeling of being at home in your own skin.  _

_ “Do you still get lonely?” _

_ You shake your head. “No. Not when I’m with you.” _

_ And the small smile she gives you is so— so much, you don’t think there are words in any language to do it any justice.  _

_ “I’m glad,” she says softly, and you love her. _

_ The realization comes to you with the sudden force of someone shouting in your ear— but it’s just you, it’s just you and you love her. It’s just you, sitting next to her, undeserving of her graceful presence— of her smile, of the affectionate glow in her sunlight eyes, the elegant slope of her bare shoulders and the way her skin is pure moonlight— you sit there, and you are so certainly and irrefutably in love with her.  _

_ She reaches over to thread her fingers through yours. “Tell me about something else.” _

_ You squeeze her hand. “Like what?”  _

_ “Anything. I want to listen to you.”  _

_ Oh, god. You would talk forever if only she asked you to. _

Mia takes a shaky breath, pushing off the lockers to stand up straight as she clasps both her hands over Io’s. 

“I’m sorry.”

And Io just looks ever so confused. “For what?”

“For being angry and hurt that you left. For letting myself feel like you didn’t care about me, even though I know you did.” She tries, so, so hard to smile. “It’s not fair to you. You were so—” she shakes her head. “The few times I ever felt like I wasn’t even a little bit alone were when I was with you. I shouldn’t forget that.”

And then she reaches up to cradle Io’s face, letting herself  _ feel.  _ Grief. Love.  _ Gratitude.  _ “I’m… I’m so glad I got to meet you. That I didn’t miss my chance to know you like I missed Cruz.”

God knows she didn’t get as much time with Io as she would have wanted— but she’s grateful for every moment she  _ did  _ get. She closes her eyes, leaning up on her tiptoes to press a kiss to Io’s cheek as she resolves to let the feelings pass through her— because meeting Io was a  _ good  _ thing and always will be and no amount of heartbreak will ever change that. 

“Thank you for being in my life,” she says, letting go. “You made me happier than anyone ever has.”

And Io’s still holding on, but Mia doesn’t open her eyes.

* * *

It’s still dark when she stirs. There’s rustling outside her door, the tired sighs of beleaguered and important people returning late at night from an important event, and Mia resigns herself to dozing off through the clinking of two wineglasses as she’s always done. 

“Go on ahead, baby— I just wanna check on the kids first before we go to bed.” 

The soft whisper jolts Mia into sharp consciousness. That’s not her parents outside her door— it’s Karen and Aurora, coming back from the government assembly. Karen and Aurora, saying ‘the kids’ as if she and Nicola are  _ their  _ kids, and—

She panics and closes her eyes as her door opens slowly. Should she pretend to be asleep? Say hi? Would that be weirder? She doesn’t know— no one’s ever come into check in on her like this before. 

Soft footsteps— she tries to stay expressionless as she hears Karen walk up to her before placing a warm hand over her forehead as if she’s checking for her temperature— which, she probably is. Mia carefully, carefully lies still as Karen pulls her duvet up a little father over her chin, tucks it more securely into her sides before leaving as quietly as she came. 

The door clicks, and Mia sniffles into her pillow. The tiniest bit of blue light peeks through her window and she could almost laugh at the dramatic timing— it’s a new day. It’s a new day, and she’s right where she belongs. 

She sits up to peer out the worn and cracked pane, watching the cityscape glow dimly with the dawn, the stalk of the Weeping Tree standing brighter than all as it reaches towards the heavens. She scoffs quietly at the theatricality of it all. It’s a new day, and she’s greeting it all by herself in her room but she doesn’t feel quite so alone anymore— she never has been, in the end, even when all else failed. 

_ Good morning, _ she thinks to the creature keeping her heart together.  _ I’ll take better care of you today, I promise.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can you tell I never went to Columbia? just being 100% upfront here, all the college experiences listed here are directly pulled from my time at McGill lmao I know it's a very different vibe but who CAREs ivy league schools are just not relatable
> 
> also, the book being referenced is Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes-- i picked it up so i could osmosis the slightly more poignant style for a change in POV im doing next chapter, but it ended up helping me solve the problem i had in this one so i just kinda rolled with it
> 
> the next chapter will be a LOT shorter but also will be up a lot sooner


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